It really is, and it absolutely should be in the core. My guess is that the only reason there isn’t more demand for this is because the new users that really need(ed) to contact a mod failed to do so and just silently disappeared. I have the advantage of a large user base imported from my previous forum with helpful members that @mention me when I’m needed. Before installing Jay’s plugin I was constantly getting pinged about new users that were trying to contact me and eventually posted in a public topic that they couldn’t do so.
Exactly.