I'm hoping that the folks running the bots use their bots' failure to negotiate a connection as a filter in a similar, but opposite, way that Nigerian scammers

I'm hoping that the folks running the bots use their bots' failure to negotiate a connection as a filter in a similar, but opposite, way that Nigerian scammers use ridiculously scammy, all caps, emails as a filter. It would significantly reduce log spam if each bot only ever connected once. Anyone who responds to a Nigerian scam email is much more likely to be able to be successfully scammed. It is more efficient, for the scammer, that less credulous people get filtered out in the first step, so as not to waste time on them. Similarly, any site where an ssh bot fails connection because the site operator removed e.g., weaker default ciphers is much less likely to support password auth for it to even be possible to have a password brute forced. It is more efficient for the bot operator to just move along to a more likely target.