I'm not nearly the GIMP expert or artist may others are but I do own and operate a good number of servers and would definitely be up for hosting GimpChat at my own expense if it meant keeping the site going and even upgrading the forum software to something more modern. I own and administrate a number of forums so that's not new territory. And there's always going to be a market for open source graphic image software. I don't think it's fair to place the onus on one individual to keep a site up and running. It's a lot more work than meets the eye.

I know at least one forum where the mods and active users got tired of the absent/unresponsive admin, so after asking around one of the mods created a concurrent site and they all jumped ship. Forum traffic on the old forum disappeared overnight.

This is what inspired me to do the same on "gimpforums.com" (even if eventually a un-repaired breakdown forced me to act more swiftly than I envisioned).

Yes, Ofnuts, your site is the best one for asking and receiving help on Gimp, I guess everybody will admit it.
Unfortunately it's not the easiest to exchange what on GC is called "Gimp Art".

I'm not here to recruit users for G-F.n... I'm just mentioning that "jumping forums" can be done and works. A forum doesn't belong to its owner but to its active users. If I were you I would make a quick poll to see if there are enough people here to take up on Mike's offer and start something else with a group of trustable admins.

Sounds like a good idea. The best forums have the best moderation. Remember how GIMP Talk dwindled down to nothing?

GT had good mods (Griatch was one and hey, I eventually became one). It died because:

• It got two very long outages a few months apart, so people moved to more reliable platforms (IIRC this also happened more or less when flickr and Facebook started to get very popular...).
• The admins never explained why it took so long to repair things, and eventually started turning on ads. So the remaining mods, feeling a bit shafted by some stranger making money from their volunteer work, stopped moderating.
• Since the GT admins never attempted to install spam-control tools, all the spamming control was in the hands of the mods, with the main spam counter-measure being a screening of first posts by the mods. Without mods to do it, the first posts never got published and the flow of newcomers dwindled quickly.

Will they ever learn? StackOverflow is also alienating its volunteer mods/reviewers/editors, and many ceased the moderation work.

Maybe we should make a discord server of GimpChat if the forum probably dies out soon probably since forums are hardly a popular thing nowadays. (discord servers kinda act like forums in terms of how it works & stuff.)

I heard there's an existing gimp related discord from a Reddit subreddit called r/GIMP, I searched "gimp discord" & clicked on the top link, we all could join that discord server if the forum is no longer active in the future, but I already joined that discord server but I will still be active sometimes on this forum.

Discord is going to be a cultural shock for many people here.

Well, that is a forum that I never knew. As a newbie in python, I could ask python experts about how to? Thank a lot ofnuts.

It's time. Someone is offering resources, a server, admin access to updated forum software. What more do we need as a group? This is a decision we should ALL make for the future of our love for GIMP. Number One, chart a course for Alpha Centauri, full speed ahead...make it so.

Mahvin - well said; once again you have my strong support for your comments in regards (I presume) to Mike's offer. But my presumption is that, under that approach, a completely new Gimp forum (Gimp Chit Chat? ) would need to be established - because of GC ownership issues.

We can submit new names and vote. I, for one, won't raise much fuss on the name, as long as I know the forum is in control of people who love the software as much as I do. Anything else is a moot point.

I too came from GT nearly a decade ago now. I still remember when Oregonian invited me here. Hope this forum doesn't die like GT did.

If the active mods here decided to create a new forum, I would certainly join it and continue gimping.

Yeah. I realize there's not much to mod, haven't even seen any of those random spam ads lately.
But if the Admin is absent, that's not good.
Like what happens in the end if there are no updates etc. to the forum software.
Don't they need patches like any other software?

I help to mod a GIMP discord server. While we try to help as much as we can when users approach us with questions, lots and lots of times I've directioned people here to know more about plugins/scripts or specific tutorials. This is a very helpful forum I've been lurking for years without an account, if a new forum is made I'll centainly join, the only problem that may appear is being able to ''transition'' the traffic between the two forums.