I agree that cliques are a BAD thing. Like you, I have never had a good experience with them.
I also agree with all of your statements about Anonymous being useful in their own way. It needs to be kept. One thing that we have seen happen and admitted to is a real user either forgetting to log in or somehow the login getting messed and ends up posting a node as Anonymous. We need to keep that in mind when dealing with Anonymous.

Roy Alan