I am working on the feature now. But it may take quite some time to go live, since I am working on the uber secret new version of u2start which will come out when the album is out, out of spite
The "hover nightmare" I spoke about would happen only if the whole avatar or, in a lesser extent the username, brought up a huge box each time they were travelled over by the mouse. If the "hoverable" zone is small that woulnd't be a big problem.
Aha, good point, I also prefer click as I pointed out before
I have another idea regarding the "send PM", it might be completely useless but it just popped in my mind:
maybe the "send PM" link can be designed so it doesn't redirect you to a fresh "Compose PM" page (getting you out of the forum page), but instead the background dims and you can write the PM in a pop window? Don't know if I explained it good enough And maybe I'm too influenced by Facebook where you can write pms in a pop window without going out of your current page...