"New Board. The Ultra Modern News Board." Topic

That's a good re-definition.

Isn't there already a poll proposal for this?

Who says the news stories don't have a direct miniature wargaming application.

I suspect 99%+ of the ones posted do indeed have that.

Perhaps some just lack the creativity to come up with ideas to utilize them.

For example, yesterday's Ukrainian news could be used to develop decent operational, and tactical military scenarios in a variety of scales, from micro-armor to 1/48th scale.

The Kurile Islands could end up being good scenario fodder for amphibious landings, and air/sea battles or skirmishes pitting the Japanese vs. the Russians, which I suspect are probably fairly evenly matched, with the exception of Russia's tactical and strategic nukes. 1/300th or 1/600th scales for the air battles, and 1/2400th, or larger for the naval battles (1/3000th for Europeans, who seem to prefer the smaller scale naval vessels).

India is worried about all of China's new subs operating in the Indian Ocean, since more than 50% of their trade is conducted via sea (60% of China's is as well, so they are slightly more vulnerable to interdiction than the Indians are).

Apparently all lack the creativity to utilize them, for one is hard pressed to find evidence of resulting games, except the one played with only words.

Mako,

Nobody suggested that news of military affairs isn't useful to gamers. On the contrary, it is useful.

The issue is context.

Tango is spamming links to news sites without making any effort to make the content directly relevent to gamers.

This is also a business issue for Bill. Advertisers pay for ads on TMP because they're trying to connect to people interested in their tabletop wargaming products. The more TMP drifts from its tabletop wargame focus to generic military news the more its audience drifts and becomes less valuable to advertisers.

If one sells, for example, 28mm modern figures one doesn't advertise in Defense Daily which is what the UM board has become.

In some ways none of our opinions matter. Whatever Bill decides or doesn't decide the fact is that the current affairs link spamming is transforming the UM board readership from those entirely focused on modern tabletop gaming to those interested in politics and current affairs. Some TMPers even joke about this being good for the rest of the site as it serves as a trap for undesirables.

Over time that shift will influence the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of advertsing to modern gamers on the UM board. The market will correct itself.

Scanned down the page on the UM board as it stands right now and found 4 topics that were explicitly gaming related (all of which were cross posted) and 1 that was a TO&E question (which is very useful to gaming).

I don't know how many topics show on one page: 100 ?

Clicking through some of the topics with 20-30 replies, nobody is talking about gaming in any of them.

So can we maybe just drop the idea that it's about gaming and admit it's just a forum for politics?

Heck, Bill wouldn't need to run two sides side-by-side if that was the case.

(And for the record, I have no bone in the Tango thing, that's all between you two).

Nah, I'm out of that discussion with Tango. He does stuff on a public forum that causes considerable disruption and when others point out the disruption he acts like the wounded party. At this point it's just "whatever" and time to move on.

But as you point out so well the problem with the UM board remains and your solution is a good one. Hopefully Bill will take your advice. I really don't see a reason not to leave the UM board for miniatures and create a separate UM news board.

Yes, I would support this. I think fellow TMPers would welcome such a move.

D) Thanks