I have seen lots of confusion from users who can’t send PMs to other people and don’t understand why. It can be due to either the target user’s messaging permissions or the sender’s own permissions. Oftentimes people unknowingly have their messaging permissions set to Friends Only and become confused that they can’t send messages to any other people.
When you hover over the greyed-out “Message” button, it should say why you’re unable to message that person. It should either say “This person only allows messages from _____,” or “You are only allowing messages to/from _____. Visit your Account Settings page to change this.”
I agree that it’d be great if why you weren’t able to message someone was made clearer. I would tackle the issue differently though. Nobody hovers over a greyed-out button because the button is telling you it’s nonfunctional – that it can’t be interacted with. I would instead leave the message button’s appearance as enabled, but when you clicked it it showed a popup that said “You need to change your PM settings to message this user!”, “This user’s PM settings prevents you from messaging them!”, etc. That way you will 100% for certain know why you can’t PM someone when you want to.
This is a neat solution, but also a time waster for some people. I think a better way to do this would be either:
Neat solution: To have a non-disabled but obviously different appearance with the same functionality that you suggest. Users who know what their settings are and understand the system would be able to know if they can message a user at a glance. Other users will click the button then understand what the slightly-different button means, as well as why they can’t message someone. In order to combat any possible confusion, the message privacy settings page should tell users that it restricts who they can message, too.
Simple solution: To keep the buttons as they are now and add some grey text underneath them stating why a user cannot message another. This saves time for informed users and should never be confusing.
