>  I also believe that self upvoting should be outlawed across the entire platform.

Upvoting of ones comments, yes.
Maybe removing upvoting of articles, if the issues with spam and bots was taken care of.  For 99% of the user, that's the only way of getting any rewards.

I have been trying to figure out what they are, and if they are doing anything in the end...so have tried them out. In the end, I find that they do not actually increase SBD or SP, or put one higher in the view of others. What they do, is bring in revenue for the bot creator and sponsors under the guise of helping. So if I were to delegate SP or SBD to a bot, I would be getting SBD payments regularly. The bots are a business, much like the lottery...and the revenue is generated by the people who buy into it.
So now my trial is done, and I understand how they work.

### I want to ask a question, how a BOT like this will be received:

* Free to use just need to follow the issuing user.
* Upon summoning, leaves a encouraging message and up-votes from a 8k SP trail at a variable percentage depending in the merit points the summoner accumulates for using the bot. 

* It votes very lowly on self summonings and depending on the merit points can even cast 100% votes

* Merit points are earn on curation quality and supporting of users by means of advice given in the summoning comment (which might also earn a manual vote from the trail) 

* The users can call vote power it will be ignored if the merits points don't allow for and will default to the merit point level. 

* The bot pays for itself by voting its comments at the lowest possible VP%  and if positive return use it to lease SP delegation.

* People can join the trail with flexible settings to help by making the trail weight stronger or vote the comments for support which in turn will give the summoner merit points based not on the $ of the vote, but on the weight of the vote, so a minnow with no SP vote will provide the same merit points a whale vote would... actually probably more, because it is based on vote weight % not on VESTS

### So would the comment be considered spammy? And the self votes on them would be considered abusive?

Oh...I agree.

I begrudging use OriginalWorks occasionally in order to show that I'm not a bot.

An upvoting bot is no different than a article or comment making bot.

bot's don't care about content..so why bother?
I've made test posts that were total nonsense (zero effort) ...and they were still voted on by 'bots"