For what my opinion is worth - as someone who made an account on this site specifically to PM one person about one specific thing - I disagree with the "mandatory monthly email." I understand why you would be tempted to do this, and I think removing the people who sent extremely hostile emails is perfectly fair, but no one likes receiving unsolicited email. If I spent a lot of time on this site I would still not want to receive it. I do not like to receive unsolicited email from sites I do spend a lot of time on and contribute heavily to.
Further, the implication of the way you worded this in your email is at best condescending and at worst hostile (to people who have done nothing to deserve it). "Click here to read about Paul's Choice" - while it is, in a literal sense, Paul's Choice, for someone who doesn't want to receive unsolicited email that I will delete anyway, that wording is a little confrontational. It's like if I ran a restaurant and refused to supply ketchup with my fries because of a bad experience and posted a link on my site saying "click here to read about My Choice." No one would care, and they might even keep coming to my restaurant, but they would always be irritated that they couldn't have fries with ketchup.
Anyway, I'm not angry and I respect the fact that you are the site owner, but I think you are hurting members of your community (especially if you include peripheral ones like me) with both the emails and the attitude behind them. I would never send an angry email (or write an angry forum post) about this, but I feel like because I don't want the monthly email I have been lumped together with people who do those things in a very confrontational, almost hostile way. This idea of forcing people to accept the email is, in my opinion, ill-advised. It's the kind of idea that seems like a good one when you've stewed over something for awhile, or talked to a few like-minded friends, but alienates people who have done nothing wrong in practice.
Am I "using" your community? Yes, in a sense - I talked to the one person I wanted to get in touch with and thanks to him I have a bunch of trees to plant that otherwise would not have existed. I certainly haven't hurt the community in any way. Similarly, I doubt the community will notice much if I leave, which I will end up doing if I decide the emails are not worth it. I still plan to keep my account open for the time being, because I like plants and I might have a reason to use it again in the future. But if a year or so goes by and I don't gain any benefit from keeping my account open, I will end up closing it just to receive one less email per month. While that seems like a very small price to pay for something, if I'm not getting any value out of my account for an extended period of time, why pay a price for it?
Just my two cents.
(And this is my first, and probably will be my only, forum post on this site. I feel like there's something ironic and maybe a little embarrassing about that...)
