Whitelisted servers take advantage over open servers.
Whitelisted servers issue whitelist applications that they often ask to be posted in their forum thread, bumping them to the front of the list. Servers that do not apply such a whitelist, have to rely on (good) reviews of people who actually play on those servers.
Example: Aegis Gaia Life vs The Saturn Server, both a custom modpack server.
Stats
Aegis Gaia Life: 1363 views, 49 comments, currently at the top of the list.
The Saturn Server: 3395 views, 19 comments, currently at the bottom of the first page.
Aegis Gaia Life enforces a very strict whitelist, requiring players to submit an application before being able to join the server. This is done through their website's recruitment form (from Enjin).
At the end of this application, Aegis Gaia Life asks players to post the entire application here on the forums because this "helps to show the interest in our server!". By doing so, Aegis Gaia Life gains a comment and gets bumped to the top of the server list.
The Saturn Server is an open server, allowing new players to join immediately without having to fill in a whitelist application. The Saturn Server relies on players to post reviews for it to be even visible on the first page of the server list.
Side note:
I am not judging which server here is superior, just pointing out the facts.
With the rules about thread titles, there are very limited ways to let your server stand out from the rest in the list, and where do you think most people go look for a server? Right, at the top of the list. Some might even scroll down a bit, but very few will actually go look on the second page and beyond.
With the current system, whitelisted servers that ask for their applications to be posted in these forums have a clear advantage against servers that are open and free to join.
A solution would be to take a formula like 'views / comments = server score' and sort servers on that score. (PMC does something like that with votes and views)
A more drastic solution: Disallow servers to post whitelist applications in the thread comments, have them use an external page (Enjin recruitment form / Google-docs form) to get applications.
I hope you see the faulty system as I do, thanks for reading.