I believe you're misreading me. What I'm saying when I refer to "degeneracy" is that we're the best HRP server there is, period. I'm not implying we are degen or anything like that, but rather that we're quite different from some of the other HRP servers. Other servers permit ERP and dangerous 18+ scenarios that we all know cause drama and legal issues.
As for not caring what is said on reddit or other places, you should. Low Whitelist pop is a subissue / symptom of Low GenPop. It's better to remediate the actual root of the problem which is low genpop.
A user who watches a few Nurse or Sseth or whatever videos on youtube will google "best ss13 servers" the first results would be reddit followed by 4chan and other servers. In general life, it's quite a meme that if you want good generic advice adding the suffix "reddit" to your search will often bring you to a good discussion page about things. It's not very hard to imagine that a majority of players seeking a server, and not just randomly selecting one in the hub, will likely go to the main community nexus of ss13, which most definitely is r/ss13 or some /v/ threads (but those are more rare).
Type "Aurora" into the searchfield limiting it to r/ss13 and you will notice we are hardly spoken of, and when there are the rare threads of "what do you think of Aurora" it is a neutral light of the greatest place to HRP yet many bad experiences even from long-term players who fell into the path of judgement.
As I've said before and will always, SS13 is a small community and those interested are small as well. The learning curve wall for entry is deterrent, so the overall SS13 playerpool is rotating with very rare surges of fresh players, (this is a self proving concept known as 'greytide'). If we want to continue for the next 6 years we may wish to take our PR into risk management discussions, and what can be done not to just counteract negative experiences but correct past grievances people may have had.