Having the offical faction ratios would help to prevent this.
How would someone know which server and faction to have rolled on without any idea of the balance at the time?
If x number of people were intending on playing on Herod, and began there on day one based on their preferred faction, how would they be aware if the ratio was skewed one way or another initially and thus decide to roll the alternative faction or on a different server? At the point these issues became more and more apparent, many people had already dedicated time into their toons and were getting into 20+ contested zones.
I currently play Heartseeker Horde and think I am contributing to improving the faction ratio, but how can I confirm that? When I played Faer Horde, I think it was relatively even and therefore was not negatively impacting balance; however, I have no idea if that was actually the case being that no data is provided.
This could be a player-solved issue to a degree, but without data isn’t possible to address accurately. Given the choice, I personally would always choose a relatively balanced server over a heavily skewed one. For imba servers, knowing the ratio also can confirm if rolling as the underdog will be helpful and full of WPvP action, or simply overwhelmingly crushing to the point open world gaming is very inefficient.
With the current rate of updates, we’ll probably know in P5 what ratios are actually close to =P