As we already discussed, topic autopromotion is problematic because it can't be prevented, even if we want it.

The simplest and quickest action is to disable autopromotion completely, at least temporarily (that would be my choice), and use manual promotion for now.

A possible future improvement is to announce that a topic is going to get promoted, unless anyone objects (using a keyword), and then do it a few days later. The keyword could be something like @issuebot ignore (also react to @issuebot, ignore and ignore whitespace differences). Alternatively, the autopromotion could be avoided, just a nagging comment would be added every e.g. 2 weeks without any activity.