I was caught by surprise by this, and after looking over the new rules, I will venture to suggest that they are kind of dumb -- at least the one about the minimum number of posts. On the one hand, I appreciate why they have been changed (to keep the "community" feel and to filter out people who just want to sell). However, just because someone doesn't post to the forums, doesn't mean they aren't reading them and participating in that way (me, for example; I rarely feel like I have anything important enough to post, but I learn from others' posts all the time). Also, I'm not sure what is wrong with people selling things here if there are folks who want to buy them.

Seems like an unintended consequence of this new rule could be a bunch of worthless posts, so people can get above the minimum threshold, and who wants to have to wade through those?