[timburks]

These are good distinctions, and all categories (especially the lower ones) are well-represented on sites like digg, reddit, and this one.

But there's at least one more dimension to this that seems completely orthogonal, and that's identity. If you want your opinion to be appreciated, then I think that you should be willing to identify yourself. With so much information competing for my attention, I'm much more willing to pay attention to people that give me a way to track back to some background on them, whether they are famous or not. So unless you're worried about your opinion triggering a nighttime visit from the secret police, don't hide your identity. Mine's here: http://blog.neontology.com/about.

[halostatue]

This is similar to my stance that I took last November in my own blog. I no longer allow anonymous comments. It doesn't matter as much for me because I don't get many comments, but I have to be able to identify you through an established web site or via email as a real person before I'll allow comments.