Why good servers (even if few) must suffer same penalty together with bad servers? The penalty I'm speaking of is "Let's get rid of MS, period".
The problem starts when we offer a free-service for a people that don't bother to read and follow the MS rules. We are offering a privilege to the kids who did nothing to deserve it. What value would you give for something that was given freely?
After downloading SRB2, anyone can host a server and has the power to do what he wants to do with the server, including breaking the MS rules.
The focus of the problem is not in using MS or in its existence, but it's in hosting a server on MS. Better: the problem is on who hosts. Who makes a server bad is the person who hosts. If I host a server (people know me) and a player joins and starts requesting char wads, asking for RP or acting like an idiot, I say "NO SORRY", ask to stop or ban/kick him. I could guess most of us makes the same.
What I can suggest is to keep Master Server up under following conditions:
- only reliable members could host freely on MS (a safe IP list?);
- disallow everyone else from hosting on MS;
- everybody can use MS to join servers, obviously they will join good servers only, because only reliable members can host and they'll be under reliable members.
I think we know very well who is doing a good usage from MS and who is not. Why don't we grant the right of hosting on MS only for reliable members?
If a noob asks "how I can host on MS? 'cause I cant!" We can answer "Go to Message Board, sign up for account, and if you prove you are a decent member (being a helpful member, participating in contests; no bans; no warns etc and so on), we will give you the right of hosting on MS. If later you start breaking the rules, we will revoke your privileges". This way people will be "paying" for a privilege and will start giving due value for it. If they want to open a RP server, they'll be forced to open a private server.
About "Decent netgames ALREADY no longer exist": It's like "There are violence everywhere, so peace no longer exists". I can guarantee there are good servers, few, but they still exist. Yesterday I played one, a CTF. Even co-op servers, once in a while, I found a playable one. Even when I host a co-op server with Mystic Realm, Acid Missile or even official maps, I can make it interesting, people get involved with goals... if someone start being a problem, I merely kick or ban such player.
I think MS very handy and useful when I want to play or host.