We are not talking about bitcoin like mining that is used to secure network for ever. We are talking about 2 month mining period that is used to distribute coins to mining community outside of stakeholders and people who read this forum. Mining period will end and Nem will be 100% POS like Nxt.
I know you are not talking about mining to secure the coin... I'm flatly against 'mining' as a complete waste of everyones time and I don't think it ensures more fairness/equality than what NEM leadership are currently doing because all miners are not equal..
NEM has a large number of stakeholders and not all of them will hold onto everything otherwise the coin will go nowhere so the stakeholders need to put NEM to work and that will increase its distribution.
I like the Computing for Good / World Computing Grid initiative and its an interesting alternative to a faucet, i.e. instead of begging for some coins to get you started you have to do something for good, if the community picks this idea up thats good, if not thats fine too.
Even my laptop donates 20% of its CPU now....
Doing something for good instead of begging is a great possibility to attract new members.
Nevertheless I don't think we should abstain completely from faucet.
Its a good and low cost way for publicity and we should use any kind of publicity.