Hi @jingis07, thanks for your explanation. Now I understand: your query gets all comments done via steepshot, but does not include comments done via steemit, busy, etc,. Filtering out the bot authors on those comments probably makes no difference, since the bots don't post via steepshot anyway but use other/custom app settings in json_metadata. So the actual engagement level on steepshot posts is likely to be higher than the numbers you've shown.
I think it could work to get all replies to a steepshot post by joining Comments as posts with Comments as replies on posts.permlink = replies.parent_permlink etc... In that case your author exclude list could be used to filter out the bot replies.