Fewer steps to create a private message?

[awesomerobot (Kris)]

@adamengst

One solution might be to add a New Message link to the Messages list in the avatar drop-down.

This has been asked for in the past, so I went ahead and created a new theme component that adds it: Add a New Message button to the PM notification menu

There’s an existing topic that contains a little reasoning about why we don’t have a button in the dropdown by default:

New message button in messages dropdown

I’d be opposed to this as a default since it elevates “personal message” to the same level as a public message. It might be more appropriate as a theme component for certain sites where a lot of messaging is private.

Another quick way to create a message is to click the “new topic” button and selecting “new message.” This isn’t particularly obvious, so I hope to add some kind of new user education that points this out in the future!