Should members be forced to post?

This thread brings up a good topic, on which I shall make my own feelings known: Should members be forced to post?  It aplies to message boards and chat forums. 

I was once an active member on a board…one of it’s mods even…I posted an average of 20-30 posts a week, tried to stay active on every board and most threads, talked with all the members, went and invited all my friends to join (ending up bringing in about 25 new members), this went on for about 6 months, than my teenaged brother ended up in the hospital with a heart problem 2 days before Christmas in 2005, and I left a post telling them (the admin and members) that I’d not be around for a few weeks, cause I didn’t have time for a message board when I had to take care of my little brother…well long story short, my brother got some of the best doctors around and is doing fine now; a total of 6 weeks past before I got online again…I went to the board to tell them that my brother was okay now and that I would be able to return, and was shocked to find that I had been banned and could not sign in…I emailed the admin and asked if she knew about it and how I could sing in, and she sent me a very mean, nasty, and rude email, accuseingh me of ruining her board because I stopped posting, she said since her board was “obviously not important to” me anymore that she had no choice but to ban me. I was shocked and stunned. I couldn’t believe it. Later my 25+ friends who had joined, got in touch with me and told me that, she had banned each of them as well over the next few weeks, her reason, was that they had gone over a week without posting and therefore “did not care about” her or her board. This continued on for several months, until she finaly had banned over 50 members, and than sent us all an email saying that she was forced to delete the board because everyone left. That was the weirdest experiance I think I’ve ever had with any forum I’ve ever joined.

For me, on my own boards, I do have a posting rule. I ask members if they are going to join please at least post hen they get the chance to stop by and read, at least to say hi if nothing else. If a year goes by (365 days since the member’s last post) I email them and ask if they still want to be members or if they’d like to un-join. Most times they come back post a couple of times, say they’d deleted their cookies and lost the link back and were glad I’d emailed them asking them to return. So far I’ve never had to delete any of my members as a result.