How do you use search?
Gimp Chat Search
Do you use any of these links?
Gimp Chat Tutorial Index
Gimp Tips and Tricks
Essential GIMP Tutorials
Do you use a tutorial bookmark folder?
Have you thought about compiling such a list for yourself or one you could share with others?
Just curious!

There are currently 480+ tutorials; I'm guessing at least 65-70% have been posted by infrequent or dormant members.

I Agree!

what about making tags available to a topic, like what's used at the plugin registry and gimpscripts? If the forum software won't support that, another approach might be adding descriptors in the thread title. Something like:
Letter Drop Tutorial [Animation][Text Effect]

The 65-70% part will make more sense if you scan the Gimp Chat Index by Author.
Categories are subjective, keywords are better; I like a tag cloud myself.
When you say thumbnails do you mean in the tutorial thread list or in the Gimp Chat Index?
Can you give a few example of 'the best website', I'd like to see how they work?
Keep in mind this is a forum not a blog or website.

Personally i hate nested boards and sub categories i would not like the change

A example of a forum with far too much categories, all containing several"child board" each containing other nested "Child Boards " is http://www.fractalforums.com , i hope GC would not do something alike, browse that forum for me is a pain, also because new post are not visible if are done on "child board" so each time i have to explore all the labyrinth.

for what you wish is much better learn to use search

And as far as improvements would be sufficient allow to "tag" the new topic :

using your example of Tutorial i will found useful Tutorials tagged as you suggested ( GIMP basics, Quick Tips, Animations, Text Effects, Special Effects, Photo Effects, Design, Uncategorized/Other, etc.) that for sure will make search easier...BUT i will found horrible them not as tags but as nested boards.

Also because many of that categories often overlap, not a problem if are "tags" because you may use several tags so the same tut may be tagged " Quick Tips" "Animations" "Text Effects" "Special Effects" " Design"
BUT if instead would be new nested boards ...where you will post a quick tutorial about animated , special logo effect ? ... under "Quick Tips" ,under "Animations" under "Text Effects" or , "Special Effects" or under" Design" ...you will be forced to chose 1

And then to search quickly you will need a magick crystal ball telling you which of the 5 possible adapt boards was chosen

I already have similar nightmares when browsing fractalforums please, please don't do the same here on GC

We are certainly open to better ways of indexing the tutorials and there are some limitations when scanning the master index or using the built-in search feature. Post tags could be a useful addition. We do ask that members who submit tutorials include a final image of the result but we can't always enforce those rules.

Some people don't actually add the content here, rather they post an off-site link to a tutorial (or an image), which usually ends up dead, or moved, and eventually has to be deleted.

Believe me, we're listening to suggestions and taking them all seriously. Thanks for expressing yourselves. Hopefully, more will do the same.

IMO, I think post tags added to the subject line would be the fastest and easiest solution. I agree that it is very difficult to find the tutorials you might be hunting for, so I will be happy with any solution that will make it easier.

It would be nice if tags may be added not only by the tutorial authors but also by registered users

Regarding the tutorials, the problem is that you're using a forum as a library. I think it would be better to have a site similar to GimpScripts, say GimpTutorials, where tutorials can be filed, categorised, tagged and managed by a librarian working to a defined set of guidelines.

Kevin

I agree and add more:

Tags (preferably with auto-suggestion, so that different users will not invent synonymous tag-names, and thus redundancy, ambiguity)

tutorial preview images in search results (for effects, logos, or "before and after", where applicable)

discourage animation in user's avatar!
that's really distracting and against any website usability recommendations!
common guys, i am here already, reading your post - there's no need to catch my attention!!!

don't allow images in the signature....
we all want to show-off but signature images... :
1) confuse me from the actual post/tutorial images !
2) force me to scroll a lot (then i'm losing the context and my mind ...)
3) takes more time / CPU to load and scroll
4) that's what avatars are for!

suggest users to embed images instead of link to someplace else.
it's much faster to decide (in the forum and in RSS) if this tutorial/post is relevant!

last administrative note:
the registration captcha isn't very good: i failed to separating between fish and bird names (and my english is relatively good, so how many times other users fail to enter captcha?).
it's bad for accessibility, but then - if someone's using this board then he/she can operate GIMP, thus drag & drop isn;t an issue

The simple solution for this is to do what I do, turn off displaying signatures in the user control panel:

A nice improvement for this site could be to make the board index sortable, by equipping the header cells of the table with clickable arrows allowing to order the open threads by a specific category among the available ones, such as "Topics", "Replies", "Views", "Last post", etc.

I think it might also be worth adding the capacity to browse all the open threads listed in the uncategorized section of the home page, that is not only the most recent topics but also the older ones, which would be easily fetched by placing at the bottom of the page the numbered links to the successive pages, including "Go to page" and "Next", as it is already provided in each of the special forum sections.