I put this little manifesto up on my flickr profile...
I am a collector... which is to say, a member of a category which is the subject of some controversy. I have to admit, I don't get the controversy. My collecting has, as far as I can tell, no impact whatsoever on the production and consumption of photography. If it has no impact, then it is has no harmful impact.
[Note that at Deviantart, faving has an impact -- it raises the profile of the faved photo. This can be expected to be a good thing for the producer of the photo. On the other hand, if crap gets faved, then crap builds up in photostreams ranked by most faves... Luckily, I don