I'm against exposing lurkers, and even more against exposing lurking VIPs -- I know that I tend to register at any community when I decide it's a place I'd like to post at some point, not when I'm about to make my first post.
For ordinary users, I don't want to see the spotlight turned on them before they want to post. Or if they don't plan to post at all, but have registered in order to be able to manage subscriptions and the like.
And for VIPs, there's the added factor of people spreading the word of "Hey, Alyson Hannigan just registered at Buffistas.org! Go leave shoutouts to her there!" If AH (or whomever) wasn't even planning to post, or wasn't ready to.
Anyway, I'm very uncomfortable with having VIPs singled out officially as a separate class of Buffista. Yes, we all get excited when, say, Tim comes by, but we don't make his posts blink bright red or anything like that. And I wouldn't be surprised if we get the VIP posts we do in part because we treat them like Buffistas and not like aliens.