The PE Thread 2 is exactly the thing he's hinting at you to avoid. If you can prove that PE can do anything effective, you'll be likely to spark some interest and people might be interested in joining. If you just keep trying to persuade people to become members, the support you'll recieve is none, since no one believes that there's anything PE can do. You don't need a big annoying forum thread to gain members, just do something productive.