The official Team Fortress 2 blog reveals Valve's plan to improve your experience while surfing the uncharted waters of public game servers. It has implemented a scoring system that demotes (and sometimes deletes) poor servers.
Valve's Robin Walker explains the scoring system at the official TF2 blog, writing that game servers will be scored higher or lower depending on how long players continue to play on a particular server. In short, if players hop on to a server, then quickly hop out, assuming they're dissatisfied, the server scores lower.
If they stick around, the server's score rises over time.
Sounds like a rather neat system, one that looks like it has already taken effect for Steam users. Walker notes that the worst of the worst have been delisted from Steam's game server search.
The positives sound plentiful. It promotes better server experiences, maybe even better player behavior, if you have faith in such a possibility, and doesn't affect password protected servers. So if you want to continue to be a custom game-hosting schmuck on your own server, feel free to go nuts.
And that's what ye git fer toochin that! [TF2 Blog]