Well the topics we currently see on the side ARE the trending topics on steemit. The steem logo i think would be redundant.
Also reputation is a bit more complicated than that and is a great source of worth on the platform. Its unlikely that anyone who "spams" has a high rep.
I would love to have a grid option however, and a dropdown submit a story.
Indeed. Reputation number easily go down if the spam user is red flagged by the people.