Yeah..there are a lot of ideas but for the moment we have to work with the current API. @noisy mentioned of an upcoming update on that but I don't have a timeframe. About reputation, yes, in general, for every upvote you get your reputation grows. And the problem we are faced is that on the trending page are mostly the same few hundred people, which stagnates growth overall. Thanks for the support, take care.
RE: Proposed new section/method for seggregating posts starting with the trending page