Interesting. Promise not to actually send any PMs or start any conversations, but which members might those be?
Not my own discovery, I'm just remembering some other post on the topic. May have even been in this thread earlier. Anyway what I'd read was that it had something to do with the user's join date. I hardly ever used PMs on this site anyway so I didn't notice when they broke. Either way enjoy it for what it is! One day the whole database will break down and that will be the end of it all.
A day or two back the site was down, maybe around 12 hours? Was proceeded by sluggish posting/refresh. Seems to be doing it again; maybe not out of the woods yet.
Mendel ... Unmasked!!! Rather like meeting a radio personality and finding they don't look like they sound ... or don't look like they write. Edit to add: If you think the PC website is flaky, try the electricity here where I am. It's going off about once every five minutes, for about half a minute to a minute.
As a first-year in college, I was baffled by the number of people I didn't even know who would come up to me and want to ask me advanced chemistry questions. (I wasn't a chem major. It was my first year; I hadn't declared any major yet!) It stayed baffling until one morning I stumbled into the cafeteria for breakfast, and rubbed my eyes, and saw myself sitting at a table across the dining room, talking animatedly with a bunch of chem students.