Eldad is right, but on a temporary basis, you can possibly take the small risk of following up on the responses to your gmail as long as they are from people who are registered members here (username in bold face type). Yes, each person you responded to would have one chance to see your IP address, but there's usually not much that can really be done with that unless you're using a fixed IP address from something like a workplace (look yourself up on whatismyipaddress.com and see what your situation is.) Regular home IP addresses will just be traceable to the service provider and general area. Convert to a secure email a.s.a.p., though.

Since a "troll" (= bad guy - I could see you were new because you said you'd be 'trolling through') might fake being a member when he writes to you, you can ask members who write to you to verify themselves by posting something on the site mentioning the contact with you. Again, this is under their registered name (bold face type - you can't trust the unregistered names that are in regular type because the person hasn't used a password to post, so anyone can mimic being him). Maybe you could set up a little thread asking members who've emailed you to post their verification as a response. (Let me know if that doesn't immediately make sense to you).

Of course, it would also be good to register yourself. Just email the webmaster at the given address. Using your own secure email.