Just a minor feature recommendation for general discussion.
Currently you can PM a person from within a thread by clicking on them and selecting it from the drop down, but this isn't as useful as actually being able to reply to the content of their post via PM, without having to grab the quote and set a title and whatnot.
It's easy to extend add behavior, by modifying the memberaction_dropdown template slightly;
[SPOILER="technical detail"]
[html]
<vb:if condition="$show['pmlink'] AND $memberinfo['threadid'] AND $memberinfo['postid'] ">
<li class="left">
<a href="private.php?{vb:raw session.sessionurl}do=newpm&u={vb:raw memberinfo.userid}&postid={vb:raw memberinfo.postid}&threadid={vb:raw memberinfo.threadid}&title={vb:raw memberinfo.title}" class="siteicon_message" rel="nofollow">
Reply via PM
</a>
</li>
</vb:if>
[/html]
and then adding a small plugin to private_newpm_blank;
[PHP]
$vbulletin->input->clean_array_gpc('r', array(
'threadid' => TYPE_UINT,
'postid' => TYPE_UINT,
'title' => TYPE_NOHTML,
));
if ( $vbulletin->GPC['postid'] > 0)
{
$pm['message'] = fetch_quotable_posts(Array( $vbulletin->GPC['postid']), $vbulletin->GPC['threadid'], $unquoted_posts, $quoted_post_ids );
$pm['title'] = fetch_quote_title( $vbulletin->GPC['title'], $vbulletin->GPC['title']);
}
[/PHP]
[/SPOILER]
This makes the link itself pass the title and the necessary IDs to pop the recipient, title and quotes right into the PM as it loads, using all the standard built-in securities to make sure you can't quote threads you brute-force hidden threads content.
While it's not a huge change, it's a convenient one that makes it easier to "take things to PMs" when appropriate, and is fairly simple to implement with no real drawbacks.