For the record: It’s the protocols that ultimately need to be fixed - not bid bots. The hard forks that were implemented last year are clearly not working. Delegation, linearity, and the 10-vote target improved nothing. In fact, these things have made the environment/behavior here much worse.

I completly agree - let's stop talking about fixing it - here comes my proposal for a solution:
https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@steemhq/how-to-make-steem-great-again-the-exponential-author-reward-method