I think I wrote about my opinion on this in one of the threads on the cubeengine site before:
I do realise that auth servers are meant for gameplay where people shouldnt have to worry about one person claiming master and kicking everyone. That's also a nice thing and I'm glad auth has been added for that purpose. But regardless of that, there are way too many auth servers - there were too many back when it was added and there are too many now. When I complained about it earlier I got an answer I should just be patient because the serverlist will balance itself and more open servers will appear. It did not.
I don't want to say that the situation is catastrophic now :P It's still possible to find servers to play on, but it would be MUCH more convenient if most of the servers were open instead of auth. Because honestly, most auth servers are just for the birds. Back then I suggested to have open servers as a default and to require a key similar to authkeys but for servers to open an auth server (or just something that makes it more difficult to set up an auth server so not every Joe sets up an auth server when it's not needed at all), so those who really want one could still get such a server, which are mainly clans who have servers for gameplay. I think it would work quite well this way, there would be enough auth servers still, but the majority of the empty auth servers that are useless for unexperienced players would turn into open servers, available for coopedit, private duels, etc.
I suppose that's another problem, new players will maybe not understand the difference between auth and open servers and get frustrated quickly about the fact that in most places they can't get master and can't set mastermode 2 which is essential for 1on1s and decent coopedit sessions.
Btw, since some people have been mentioning other things to improve about the setlist: Please make an option to enable/disable the constant updating because it's really annoying to find a server or get a good idea of how many servers there are where I can play whatever when the serverlist is mixed through every 3 seconds :P