I remember when I first joined. It took forever, but was so happy when I finally got whitelisted by OCDB. They don't really do that anymore now that all the abuse has been kept in order (for the most part). It was pretty awesome to have a chance at the upvotes though.
The reason they did it in the first place was to undercut the bots and still distribute to people who deserved it. It wasn't ideal, but it was the best of a bad situation and was able to influence the eventual destructuring of the bidbots. :)
Yeah, I remember they were kind of billed as the "good bidbot" back in the day. i.e. they actually vetted the people they upvoted versus just tagging the highest bidder.