# Starting a new message while browsing a topic **URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/starting-a-new-message-while-browsing-a-topic/39528 **Category:** UX **Created:** [February 13, 2016, 1:13pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/starting-a-new-message-while-browsing-a-topic/39528 "2016-02-13T13:13:06Z") **Posts on this page:** 1 **Showing post:** 7
### Author: ![purldator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bcef8e/32.png) [@purldator](https://meta.discourse.org/u/purldator) #### Post date: [February 13, 2016, 10:25pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/starting-a-new-message-while-browsing-a-topic/39528/7 "2016-02-13T22:25:51Z")
> [@mcwumbly](#): > > I’ve always found the flag route to be an awkward way to initiate a PM, but maybe that’s just me… > [@PM-User to Invite to Convo or Continue in PM](https://meta.discourse.org/t/pm-user-to-invite-to-convo-or-continue-in-pm/24985): > > [In relation to this topic here](https://meta.discourse.org/t/invite-existing-user-to-a-topic/12369) and [this one as well](https://meta.discourse.org/t/pm-directly-from-a-post-in-topic/7516), I suggest mirroring ‘PM User’ from the flag button to a link under “Reply as linked Topic”. Putting that feature under the flag button is not intuitive because ‘flag’ implies that something is wrong with the post and the flag button should only be clicked in that situation where Things Are Wrong And People Must Be Alerted. When I used the ‘PM User’ option under flagging today to suggest something to a user to prevent a conflict from happenin… (I agree.) > [@mcwumbly](#): > > Are there any metrics available for how often people use the flag vs. the message button to initiate a PM now? I would like to know the answer to that too. --- _[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/starting-a-new-message-while-browsing-a-topic/39528)._