Most people won't take issue with a single polite email. After all, they did show enough interest in the site to provide the email address in the first place. It's not like PM wasn't given the address willingly. Sure there will be someone who will get bent out of shape about it, but the vast majority wouldn't. This really doesn't fit the definition of 'spam'...

In one year and a couple of months abigail will reach the two year mark. tilly will eventually reach it. Both of them have given a great deal of wisdom to the site. Node age isn't a metric of worth, and we already have a mechanism for removing worthless nodes. What we're really talking about is the possible removal of 'worthless' users/accounts. tilly and abigail may be gone, but their worth has more than been proven...

/\/\averick
OmG! They killed tilly! You *bleep*!!