RE: @ecotrain: Making voting bots great (again!?) with whitelisting and 11% ROI! Plus my opinions on why voting bots are a good thing for Steemit!

Please keep in mind, I'm not commenting against your bot, specifically. I'm glad you are taking steps to try to make bots a bit better. They obviously aren't going away any time soon, and I appreciate that people taking positive steps within the bot world.

In general, I do think Steemit should discourage bots overall.
Below are some possible corrective ideas:

Limit the total amount of SP that can be delegated by an account to some percentage (10, 25, 30%)
Reduce the value of delegated SP in some way (1/2, 1/3, 1/20). i.e. Power in your hands is worth more than power loaned to someone else.
Improve the discovery capabilities in Steemit. e.g. Call out highly-commented posts, call out 'rising stars', provide 'saved favorite posts', etc.
Adjust the payout duration to reward longer lasting content instead of just more ephemeral content that requires immediate promotion.
Compare and contrast why 'Promoted' posts are less effective than more complicated vote bots.
Adjust the Promoted page to improve discovery and surfacing of promoted posts. e.g. Could Promoted posts be interspersed into Trending using a simple auction algorithm?
Build out new features that mimic the capabilities that cause people to drift to Discord rooms. e.g. Communities, Favorites, etc
Adjust payouts to better reward minnows. In many ways, the concept of a few whales acting as gatekeepers to content is also antithetical to Steemit's ideals as a decentralized blog. The core idea from my perspective is that hard-working and solid content creators can find the long-tail audience that supports them without the need for a dolphin or a whale to throw them a mercy upvote, for them to buy bid-bots, or for them to speculate their way into actual discovery.