Or maybe part of the bot operator's job was to have a manual curator look at each round of bids and say "This is decent content, pass; this one is shit, here's your refund, etc."
This would be nice, sadly, admin costs. One Bot owner could not compete with the others not doing the same, so they won't take this approach.
That's business, and the bots have enough SP from orcas and whales who still keep 000's in the kitty.
It's big making minnow status, why hand it over at that point and be able to offer nothing to your visitors.
I will be very happy to make full minnow status on my own (right now, only thanks to a couple of delegations) and once I get there I have no intention of ever letting my "free" SP fall below 500. After that, for every 200 increase, I plan to delegate 100 to a promising redfish/plankton and keep curating. But that's just me...
=^..^=
This sounds rather brill. At 500 SP you'll still need to cast a large vote weight to impact a comment/reply but if managed right it's possible to be generous starting at that point.
I'd be as happy seeing you keep your SP, knowing you aren't losing as much rShares with your votes, as will be the case next month with HF 20.