You said everything I want to say. I do not believe in bots either. I read through as many posts as I can on a given day, comment profusely, share my votes with everyone that has written something that has made me think... this is how you build community. And I firmly believe that if we build community generously, the community will generate rewards for the active participants within it.

If people are writing good content--measureable by the amount of votes they get per read--and they are not reaching greater audiences because the content is not discoverable, that is to be addressed at the UI level, not with bots. The Steemit UI that needs a full redesign to encourage the discoverablity of good, original content with all the correct rights, citations, and references, and a system for discovering a brilliant newbie's first post.