Cassin, I respect you as a long time member of this site. I am relatively new to this site and hairloss in general. It was never my intention to get into a pissing contest about something as trivial as Anderson Cooper's hair, but going back through my posts in this thread I realized I was responding to you indirectly, and my posts had the effect of creating a pissing contest.
All of my posts here are based on info I read on Dr. Rassman's site, baldingblog.com. According to him, an NW1 is the juvenile kid's hair line. He says about 3 or 4% of white men keep an NW1 into adulthood. Rassman says an NW2 is a mature hairline, and an NW3 is the first sign of what he calls "genetic balding". So if Cooper is indeed an NW2, it does not mean he is balding at all, it means he lost his teenage hairline.
I think what causes NW1/2 confusion is the shape of a given individual's hairline. It seems to me that the shapes rarely fit the chart exactly, it's more of a "How much hair have you lost" system. If you've lost your teenage hairline, regardless of its shape, you're NW2, anything beyond that is balding.
This is my interpretation of info from one guy, so its entirely possible that I'm incorrect.
Apologies if you felt like I was after you on this one. My bad.