I always felt they should make the difficulty of gathering -shards- equal to the level of the node you find the shard in, rather than having 100% chance Wind Shards in a level 30 node that give 1 experience when you gather them.

That way, when levelling your gathering you can simply gather one of each of your gathering log for bonus xp and then farm SHARDS that level from an appropriate levelled node to level up your gathering. This would make gathering much more profitable when levelling, and have the added benefit of making the shard market less run by bots and more in the hands of the players (and should hopefully lower costs of shards all round).

Right now farming level 1 shards is the quickest and easiest way for gatherers to earn money but it doesnt benefit their class/level in any way.