Times Network acquires Digit from 9.9 media.

Source: *www.adgully.com/times-network-acquires-digit-to-boost-presence-in-tech-gaming-communities-146193.html

This includes the print and website.

We don't know what this entails at this point. Stay tuned for more updates.

In case the forum gets shut down, if anybody wants to, they can add me on steam/discord.

SaiyanGoku said:
In case the forum gets shut down, if anybody wants to, they can add me on steam/discord.

it may not be shut down fully but will be altered significantly. end of an era truly.

SaiyanGoku said:
In case the forum gets shut down, if anybody wants to, they can add me on steam/discord.

Hopefully it doesn't come to that. We will think about some contingency if they announce something like that.

thetechfreak said:
it may not be shut down fully but will be altered significantly. end of an era truly.

Perhaps they could boost publicity of the forum, who knows.

Imagine if the idiots from ToI's news sites start posting here.

Lol. I will quit then.

*tard wrangling is too much for me.

Desmond said:
Lol. I will quit then.

current mod and admin committee that aren't employees of 9 dot 9 media should probably quit. no use giving free labor to a conglomerate.

skeletor said:
Imagine if the idiots from ToI's news sites start posting here.

i dont see forum continuing like this, if they have any plans for it, it will change. most likely it will be abandoned or closed.

Techenclave is a much bigger forum at this point, even r/IndianGaming is very active but isn't a forum in true sense like TDF or TE.

I assume most people here have accounts in TE & reddit as well.

I am not sure what to feel about this acquisition. But if they meddle too much in forum, then yes end of a 15 year era for me too.

in case forum shuts down, which will be best among reddit and discord to continue discussions and queries related to purchase?

TheSloth said:
in case forum shuts down, which will be best among reddit and discord to continue discussions and queries related to purchase?

Same...Find the solution of Alternative

@Desmond

TheSloth said:
in case forum shuts down, which will be best among reddit and discord to continue discussions and queries related to purchase?

Techenclave & reddit (r/IndianGaming) for me

TheSloth said:
in case forum shuts down, which will be best among reddit and discord to continue discussions and queries related to purchase?

shreeux said:
Same...Find the solution of Alternative

@Desmond

I'm discussing with other mods. We will probably have some contingency in case things go south.

Will share more details once we do so.

Running a forum costs money, so budgeting needs to be done.

Also growing a new forum is also difficult.

it would be a pity to see this forum go-it's one of the few sites i visit regularly and i daresay i have a degree of sentimental attachment to digit that stems from my habit of reading chip/digit magazines from back when i was still at school(circa 2001 or earlier i think).Also most of the senior members of this forum are very knowledgeable and share a lot of insightful info when it comes to troubleshooting hardware/software related issues (even programming problems).

It would be a priviledge to remain connected to the other members in some way in case this forum is closed-maybe we could add each other on FB.

TE is just market place. People are only active because of market place and happen to post elsewhere. But yeah, it does keep forums alive.

r/IndianGaming does not have much idea about how computers work.

In general, internet has evolved (for the worse) and forum culture is now dead.

Discord doesn't seem like best way to have forum like discussion. Reddit seems best but creating another tech related subreddit, that too on Indian based market is only redundant now. TE seems best option as of yet. What about other international forums like LTT?

Whatever is the solution, I also want to echo what quicky008 said, I would like to keep in touch with the group wherever it may be <3.

skeletor said:
TE is just market place. People are only active because of market place and happen to post elsewhere. But yeah, it does keep forums alive.

r/IndianGaming does not have much idea about how computers work.

In general, internet has evolved (for the worse) and forum culture is now dead.

Damn an end of an era

I think lowering attention spans is to blame, exacerbated by short form social media platforms like Twitter, reddit, instagram, etc.

I wonder if a Discourse based forum is a better format in the long term, though IMO Xenforo does a good job of creating a great and modern forum experience.

Yes, categorized topics are better and easy to search and follow. Isn't Xenforo paid? How do we continue it?
Reddit forum is also acceptable since we can have own post for queries and discussions.

TheSloth said:
Isn't Xenforo paid? How do we continue it?

We'll have to host another instance if things go south. We haven't decided on the specifics yet. Just waiting and watching for now.

A Xenforo license for self-hosting costs a one time fee of $195. While this has lifetime validity, security updates after one year of use require $60 renewal every year. Features such as file manager, media gallery and faster searching cost extra. Plus a whopping $350 to remove the Xenforo copyright branding from the public pages of the site.

Infrastructure costs are separate and depend on the type of hosting solution you want to go with.

I miss old members and discussions here As @skeletor suggested r/IndianGaming is full of kids now and they know nothing about computers Also techenclave is a marketplace and also its discussion forum cant be as good as how much digit forum was
@Desmond we need something to bring legacy of old digit forum back

pkkumarcool said:
@Desmond we need something to bring legacy of old digit forum back

How about CTC? Crack the Code!

pkkumarcool said:
I miss old members and discussions here As @skeletor suggested r/IndianGaming is full of kids now and they know nothing about computers Also techenclave is a marketplace and also its discussion forum cant be as good as how much digit forum was
@Desmond we need something to bring legacy of old digit forum back

TBH, a forum is only as good as it's members. For the legacy of the form to endure, it's members must stick together as well.

Vyom said:
How about CTC? Crack the Code!

I was working on a CTC webapp but kind of shelved it because I ran out of time. Need to revisit it soon.

We do have a Skoar Discord community, but people do not like Discord so much. We have many privacy conscious people in community, and others who like to use only OS software. The community is spread across WhatsApp, Element, Signal, Discord and Telegram right now anyway, with multiple groups on WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram and people have added each other on Steam, FB, X... so not worried about continuation of community.

I'm sure there will not be too many drastic changes even if they have a strategy for the forum, at least for a few months. At most we can expect some promotions...

But yeah, it is always better to plan for a contingency in case it is sunset. Im more worried about preserving all the stuff that is here now first.

The transfer will happen on 1 June, so if we need anything that can be done as Digit when it is still independent as Times, we have max one day to plan and execute it.

Vyom said:
How about CTC? Crack the Code!

Lol Me and Raaabo used to do that mostly

It did not generate as much engagement as we expected last time we tried it. First few times it was 100+ people who made it to the end, last time it was only around 16. Also same group was finishing first every time.

Anorion said:
The transfer will happen on 1 June, so if we need anything that can be done as Digit when it is still independent as Times, we have max one day to plan and execute it.

Well what can be done in 1 day?
Maybe see if we can have the backend database of all forum members and threads and posts backed up.
So that in case things go south we can revive it in some other form. If nothing else then atleast as read only in archive format for posterity.

Vyom said:
Well what can be done in 1 day?

Archive.org?

All posts in the forum could be 10+ GB, I am not sure whether archive.org can crawl all of those posts in 1 day.

Vyom said:
Well what can be done in 1 day?
Maybe see if we can have the backend database of all forum members and threads and posts backed up.
So that in case things go south we can revive it in some other form. If nothing else then atleast as read only in archive format for posterity.

I don't have access to the backend. I asked Mithun to give me access so that I can help resolving the DDOS attacks we were facing sometime back but did not get any response.

If I had access to the database, I'd store a dump on my local machine, just in case.

Hello peeps!

Nothing is going to change for a few months. That's what we've been told. The new lords will be going over all the properties and assessing how to best leverage it in the meanwhile.

I can't give out backend access because there's an IP whitelist required and the IT guys already know the office IP address ranges. So things falling outside that will be difficult to justify.

Makes sense. Though my main concern is the loss of about two decades worth of posts.

Desmond said:
We'll have to host another instance if things go south. We haven't decided on the specifics yet. Just waiting and watching for now.

A Xenforo license for self-hosting costs a one time fee of $195. While this has lifetime validity, security updates after one year of use require $60 renewal every year. Features such as file manager, media gallery and faster searching cost extra. Plus a whopping $350 to remove the Xenforo copyright branding from the public pages of the site.

Infrastructure costs are separate and depend on the type of hosting solution you want to go with.

Aren't there open source forum software though. I guess the bigger challenge would be data migration.

setanjan123 said:
Aren't there open source forum software though. I guess the bigger challenge would be data migration.

there are , but they are shit compared to xenforo etc

Desmond said:
Makes sense. Though my main concern is the loss of about two decades worth of posts.

seeing how chip forum, tech2 forum and how some other forums ended. I kind of can imagine where this is headed.

Desmond said:
Makes sense. Though my main concern is the loss of about two decades worth of posts.

Can someone from the admin team clone the forum to Archive.org then?

I don't think you can clone the forum like that to archive.org.

You submit a link and the archive.org web crawler crawls your site. That's how a snapshot of the site gets created.

Yeah but there's a chance that takedown notices might be issued if that happens. Companies protect their IPs quite ferociously.

SaiyanGoku said:
Can someone from the admin team clone the forum to Archive.org then?

No. This is something that no admin will do.

skeletor said:
No. This is something that no admin will do.

Just curious, why admin won't do?

Archive dot org does not work like that.

Like I said in another post, you submit a link and then a crawler will crawl the site and create a backup of the pages it can see. This is not the same as a database dump that holds all the data of the site.

@tamatarpakoda any clarity from new owners about forum? I honestly think this is end of the line. If they are keeping it, we deserve our tab back in the home page.

I doubt they are even aware of the forum lol.

They haven't gotten to the forum yet. Right now they're looking at the main site.

Just put a link to the forum on the main site home page and that would be really helpful.

Also links to the forum on the Youtube videos, etc would help.

tamatarpakoda said:
They haven't gotten to the forum yet. Right now they're looking at the main site.

Yeah hope a final decision is taken soon, hope you revert back to us here
PS: forum used to be one of the main tabs in the olden days (upto 2016 or 17), later they got rid of it. So if they decide to keep running the forum, it should be restored.

Is it possible to change the email associated with forum account ? I don't want TOI spamming me or leak it :chucks:

Stormbringer said:
Is it possible to change the email associated with forum account ? I don't want TOI spamming me or leak it

Yes. PM me.

I just came back to digit recently, didn't know it got acquired by times group. If you guys ( basically the people of this forum made this a place I could always come back to) are moving to somewhere else, I would appreciate if u guys send me a link as well, I'm not in any of other social media handles.

We haven't thought of that yet since we have no definite answers on what their plan is. Though you can join our Telegram group or Matrix for updates.

Let me check with the guys and see if we can share those links here.

Alternately you can join Digit's official TG channel: *t.me/digitgeek

I am one of the admins there as well, so updates will be communicated there.

I joined as Ketchum

Desmond said:
Alternately you can join Digit's official TG channel: *t.me/digitgeek

I am one of the admins there as well, so updates will be communicated there.

K_akash_i said:
I joined as Ketchum

I am @dd11011 (Persona non grata) there.

forum is not like what it used to be back in those days. i remember signing up during my old college days. who knows what those young guys doing these days ....
even the old timers are not as frequent any more.
anyways, it still feels good to come and check the posts once in a while.

if they really decide something, pl let us know where to move to next. :???:

Thing is many old timers are now married and/or senior employees where they work. As such they have much less time than they used to during the college days.

I myself work as a Technical Lead and I work appx 12 hours a day, leaving about 3 hours of spare time outside of sleeping and commuting to work. At best I check the forum for around 5 mins or so from time to time at work and I spend most of that time fighting spammers. If you haven't seen many spammers in the forum, now you know why.

Desmond said:
Thing is many old timers are now married and/or senior employees where they work. As such they have much less time than they used to during the college days.

I myself work as a Technical Lead and I work appx 12 hours a day, leaving about 3 hours of spare time outside of sleeping and commuting to work. At best I check the forum for around 5 mins or so from time to time at work and I spend most of that time fighting spammers. If you haven't seen many spammers in the forum, now you know why.

always knew forms in good hands. :))

but i kinda miss posts from some of those legendary members. understand that they moved on. anyways. :mario-run:

Desmond said:
Thing is many old timers are now married and/or senior employees where they work. As such they have much less time than they used to during the college days.

I myself work as a Technical Lead and I work appx 12 hours a day, leaving about 3 hours of spare time outside of sleeping and commuting to work. At best I check the forum for around 5 mins or so from time to time at work and I spend most of that time fighting spammers. If you haven't seen many spammers in the forum, now you know why.

why is Techenclave thriving and not digit forum then??

IIRC Techenclave is mostly a marketplace. Perhaps it captures more interest that way.

any update @tamatarpakoda @Desmond

Sadly the only update I learned here was that Raabo has left

TheSloth said:
Sadly the only update I learned here was that Raabo has left

That wasn't an update really. it's been 2+ years maybe longer.

thetechfreak said:
That wasn't an update really. it's been 2+ years maybe longer.

lol what! I never knew until few days back. I thought he had to leave after change in management,

If someone leaves, are they barred for being active in this forum ?

No, no one is barred. Both @Raaabo and @Anorion still have accounts here.

They are probably just too busy.

bubusam13 said:
If someone leaves, are they barred for being active in this forum ?

no, may ex employees are active in the forum or used to be active till recently
nothing like that