Brian as you and most members of the Forum know, the private messaging (PM) system was disabled due to massive abuse of the system...SPAM.
The spammers then shifted to posting spam in the general Forum, some as new members and others as "sleepers" sitting anywhere from a few days to a few weeks before spamming the board. Fortunately I've been able to delete most of the spam (some explicit) before too many members see it.
So as you can see before enabling the PM system, (which would again allow immediate massive abuse) some new rules would have to be instituted.

Personally I detest imposing new rules because of a few "idiots", but I suppose that is precisely why we're taking our shoes off and throwing away water bottles at the airport.