Board Thread:New Features/@comment-3513410-20170726110350/@comment-5811199-20170726133723

Tupka217 wrote: if you give bcrats the possibility to promote any account at will, that could lead to major abuse. As bot edits are generally hidden, it can take ages to discover. Pretty much this - botted users don't show up on many feeds by default (RecentChanges, WikiActivity, IRC feeds), and most users who do not use RecentChanges will not know of the 'show bots' option. So, abuse is very possible. That is why bot requests go through Special:Contact, and why some bot requests require community consensus and an alternate account before they are provided the flag.

Another example - a user intending to create a spam wiki (advertisement/promotional) could easily bot themselves and avoid detection from users who actively look for spam - which would not be ideal.