Dear GIMP developers and readers of the gimp-user mailing list,

as you probably know gimpusers.com is providing a forum-like Web interface that is connected to the official mailing lists, so that users who are not familiar or don't want to use mailing lists can use this way of communication too.

In the past, every posting that was made using our Web interface was connected to gimp-user mailing list automatically and without exceptions. We have completely reworked the forum in the last weeks, so that it is now possible to choose whether a certain thread should be connected to the mailing list. We have made this because there may be discussions on gimpusers.com that are not really on-topic on the list. It will be a symbiosis of a basic forum and a mailing list connection.

Some of the new stuff that concerns the list connection:

* Users can choose if they want to connect/share a new thread with the list.

* Readability and quoted stuff in the Web interface has been made much more user-friendly and uses more available space.

* Detection of user signatures (where possible)

* Custom author names have been removed. gimpusers.com users now always post under their gimpusers nick name.

* Attachments are now possible. They're not attached to the list email itself (too much traffic) - instead we provide a link to view them online.

* more automatic preventive measures agains spam (including recaptcha for every message that could go to the list)

* All development list (dev list, gegl developers, gimp.org web list) threads are read-only from the Web interface

* Names of authors that are writing via their email program are not trackable in any kind to remain a certain level of privacy.

I hope you like the new style. If you have any suggestions, ideas, wishes or complaints concerning the mailing list connection please let us know directly to .

Best regards, Bernhard

My opinion:

either continue to have the forum mirror the list, or do not have them connected at all. mixing contents of different sources will confuse users a lot and will annoy people on the mailing list if forum users refer to threads which did not appear there.

Thanks for the input. There will not be much mixing. If a user wants to share his "thread" with the mailing list she/he can do so. The setting is per-thread, so all replies will be sent to the list too (we don't allow a user posting a _reply_ to choose if he/she wants to share it or not). We will only disconnect or close a thread if there is spam or too much annoying stuff in it so that a user of our forum doesn't bother mailing list readers.

Also if a user refers to another thread of the forum that was not shared previously it would be the same as linking to content of an external website. It is normal to link to stuff outside with a reference. I don't think that this will be much of a problem – however if I'm wrong we'll surely find a solution.

Best regards, Bernhard