I voted "hero," along with what seems like everyone else on this site. But I would have voted somewhere below that tier if the option existed. To me, "Hero" is

I voted "hero," along with what seems like everyone else on this site. But I would have voted somewhere below that tier if the option existed. To me, "Hero" is too strong a choice to characterize my feelings, but "Neutral" is too weak. I am not sure what a word like "Neutral" means in this context. Does it mean I don't have an opinion? Does it mean I don't really care about the topic? Does it mean I'm still making up my mind? Does it mean I'd put my opinion of him at somewhere between 4 and 6 on a 10-point value scale? My point is, "Neutral" is a single value attempting to capture a wide range of possibilities, many of which are orthogonal or even contradictory to each other. Each of those possibilities is a valid choice, but because few people will look at "Neutral" from the same perspective, fewer people will select it. (That's just my guess, at any rate.) Its range of semantic meaning is so broad as to become almost meaningless. I would describe my opinion as "The ends were valid, but they don't seem to justify leaping to the means that Snowden used. On the balance, however, he did what needed to be done." Our system offers whistleblowers a range of options incrementally less extreme than the course of action he took. Maybe he'd already tried to go down that road? Maybe he feared he'd be taken down before he could air things through legitimate channels? Not sure. I don't feel that I have enough background information to make that call. Tl;dr - If "1" is "He's the devil incarnate," and 10 is "He's the best thing for our country since Abe Lincoln," I guess I'd rate him a 6-7. History may revise my opinion upward, however, as more information about his circumstances comes to light. It seems unlikely I'll revise my opinion downward, especially as I learn more about what vile shit the NSA, et al., were up to.