Thanks for the feedback! The reason we have leaderboards on the homepage in the first place is to quickly answer the question, "Is anyone actually making a living here?" I looked at Flattr and could not for the life of me answer that question. Now that the matter is established, I agree that it's time to change the homepage. I've added a +1 for you to https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/1074.
Re: Stories, see http://tomslee.net/2014/01/airbnb-stories.html for a counterargument.