But, why?? I’ve been using forums for the last 15 years and it’s the first time I encounter a forum without PM… They serve a relevant role to allow discussion (which, correct me if I’m wrong, is the effing purpose of a forum) so not having them is like… weird. Unless it’s a “feature” of Discourshit…
Sometimes you just need or want to go off topic with someone, or just want to poke a friend, or whatever not relevant to the public, so why in heavens are you barring this??
Thanks, it certainly does 
evemail
yep. it’s not like most forums, where you don’t have another private contact method. the forums are meant as an accessory to the game, which has evemail.
Maybe you haven’t noticed, but EVEmail is NOT integrated with the forums. You need to exit the forums, enter EVEGate, then send the EVEMail.
To any useful purpose, these forums don’t have a PM system. And if you want to laugh, it turns that one of the notorious features of Discourshit is its native mailing system… which we can’t use. 
A couple of thoughts:
I would seem to me that it might be helpful for people to earn privileges based on their posting and activities so that there is a more nuanced approach to user levels within the forum.
Having one single level for, basically everyone who’s not a GM or ISD member, while simple, seems to be a one size fits all approach that in the end doesn’t help build social responsibility, trust or to develop potentially useful moderation skills in forum participants.
What I think might be worth considering is this - three levels of forum membership:
Basic Level 1 - Entry Level
Granted all essential community functions as now.
Basic Level 2 - Given to people after a period of forum membership where their behaviour and quality of posting meets a certain standard
As above, but with the ability to PM people (including group PMs and discussions) with permission of the involved people (via some kind of initial mail where they can choose to allow or disallow PMs from a forum member).
Basic Level 3 - Given to people who are clearly community minded, eg, people who have helped or who have written posts helping others, people who have expressed and are clearly acting in friendly and helpful ways to newbies, people with questions and others
As above, but with the ability to PM people without first having to seek permission for this.
I think this would be a way better situation than what we have at the moment. Classifying everyone as the same, which essentially amounts to not trusting adults to be able to conduct themselves in a respectful polite way in terms of PM’ing each other just means that all communication ends up being in a forum thread. It’s also just a little patronising.
Whilst on one level this approach keeps everything in full public view, it does mean that forum topics will tend to meander around because people have no way of breaking away with one or two, or more individuals, to have a side discussion in a dynamic and flexible way.
On other forums where I’m a member PMs are used in precisely this way and it leads to more streamlined discussions in the main threads and the vast majority of people encounter no problems with it.
From a moderation point of view, nothing is utterly hidden, so if there are abuses of language or of people (bullying for example or something like that) then a sanction exists insofar as forum members could have their privileges revoked and they can be demoted to Basic Level 1 status.
I really like the fact that, sometimes (and I emphasise the use of this word here) some of the crew from CCP actually take the time to read through intelligent and well thought through ideas from players.
Sometimes (and I again emphasise the use of this word here) some members of the CCP crew actually even consider some of the suggested ideas good enough to feed through into real and tangible changes that are made.
But I do find the fact that sometimes they choose to write nothing at all fairly frustrating and it’s the kind of stuff that makes them feel, to me at least, distant, disinterested in anything that diverts from the higher mission (let’s make a bloody big pile of cash from Eve players…) and fairly difficult to talk to.
< sigh >
I would like to start with correcting one thing that mentioned by @ISD_Stall, in regards to the user levels.
There are three levels available to players, wherein only the first two will affect what sort of posting rights they have (I will not go into details on the requirements needed to pass into each level).
The decision to disable private messaging on the forums, aside from moderator messages/warnings, was taken in collaboration with the community team.
However, taking discussions off the forums and into a private conversation can still occur just as it did with the previous forums; through EVE Mail via EVE Gate, the mobile app, or game client. The difference is that users will not have a counter for unread EVE Mail in the navigation, and won’t receive notifications of EVE Mail via the forum notifications.
I understand that this feels like a huge disconnect from what the previous forums offered, and in fact it is - as the code base for the previous forums was heavily modified and contained dependencies on EVE Gate for information such as the EVE Mail notifications & corporation / alliance info.
We have no plans to modify the code base for this forum to include similar dependencies. In time however, we may consider features that could operate as plugins for the forums.
Encouraging the use of Reddit - Dive into anything instead of eve I see 
Suggesting EVE Gate is laughable given the state its in. Sending eve mails often murders all formatting, new lines, etc.
I believe the intent is to discourage private messaging of any sort so the proper method, spamming in CAPS in Jita local, can be used by everybody for every form of communication.
I know it’s always been one of CCP’s goals.
I’ve got a text pop up, telling me to stop talking to the same person in the thread, siggesting i’d use private messages.
That’s because Discourshirt haves a powerful native messaging system… just neither you nor me nor any user can use it. CCP design at its finest!
Now don’t worry, the message surely will be taken down…
In one word: cheaper.
PM would require moderation as they’re part of the forum, whereas evemail has never been moderated since it’s not a part of the forum. Only the EULA applies to mail.
That’s unreasonable to assume. Private Messages don’t get moderated. They’re private, thus don’t need any, plus it would be impossible to do for humans anyway. Just too many, usually.
If you break the forum rules in a PM, that PM will be moderated since PMs are a part of the forum. As for the privacy of PM… that’s a controversial matter, in my experience.
How would you k ow, when there are no PMs to verify? It’s still not making any sense. Look at it from a realistic, practical way: PMs are usually used by thousands. They can’t and won’t be moderated.
A PM can be flagged for moderation, as much as any message. If the forum rules forbid something, that thing is forbidden in PMs too. And since PM might (and will) be abused to try and break the forum rules, they require moderation whenever a user denounces a breach of the rules.
Ah, now I see what you’re talking about! Wow! A small op, made up of ten men and a small army of alts, could keep moderators rrreeeeaaaaalllllyyyy busy… 