Agreed, it might be nice to split them. Certainly pr-welcome if someone would like to work on it.
Otherwise, I’ll see what I can do when we come to rewrite the plugin. It’s still on my list to do… just keeps getting pushed down by other tasks that pop up.
There’s actually another problematic “feature” with the Hide my public profile and presence features profile setting which currently makes it (unintentionally, I believe) much harder to message someone who chooses that setting, since it removes the message button from user cards:
Mind there’s a separate setting for disabling messages, but this is being caused by the Hide my public profile and presence features one. I don’t think one wanting to hide profile and/or presence means necessarily that one doesn’t want to receive messages (as easily, that is). Anyway, sorry for bringing this off-topic.
Back on topic and, for what’s worth, we are using this plugin (which we ) on a fairly active forum (~140 concurrent online) and look forward for some optimizations. I’m not a Rubyist, but happy to help in any other way I can (feedback, benchmarks, etc).