actually, i’m hoping the free section of the design catalogue - assuming that’s in the plans - doesn’t just accept blind submissions from owners; i’m hoping to see some curation to allow for quality control / prevent copies of designs from filling up the place.
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Oh, also…
The Problems and Support category is actually one of the most interesting forum sections to read in my eyes. Seeing resolutions both satisfies my curiosity of potential issues but also acts as a solid knowledgebank being built for the future. It’s also nice to some degree to be able to troubleshoot for others and get them rolling. The following is somewhat frustrating:
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when both an email and a topic are created the topic is locked in favor of the email correspondence and we never see a resolution. I know it’s being handled by GF CS, but you lose the aspect of a knowledgebank being built. On the flip side, I have no suggestions that could be implemented here other than if both methods of contact are made, favor is given to the forum ticket so that we can all expand our knowledge. Maybe it’s more trouble for the GF to provide support in a forum as opposed to through email, but in the long-run, members could actually lessen the workload of the CS team.
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topics being pushed immediately to Beyond the Manual from Problems and Support. While some stuff may definitely be “beyond the manual”, non-PG material shouldn’t immediately exclude an issue from being deemed a problem to be addressed in Problems and Support. I don’t know if a process has been developed for the CS team yet, but a flow chart might be a good idea to see if the root of the problem is potentially a proper support issue.
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It’s going to need slightly laxer standards than the current catalog offerings I’m afraid. Those are so pristine I’m reconsidering my decision to submit designs. (Again.)
I understand why theirs have to be - they have standards to maintain. But documenting the assembly process for some designs is going to add as much time to the process as the original design takes. Or longer. That’s not a problem for a designer intending to sell their work, but for beginners, it will be a bottle-neck and a block to submitting designs.
Which is the reason for having a clearly defined separate section, so that folks realize that Glowforge is not necessarily advocating the use of them or guaranteeing results.
Good points though, there need to be some standards. Clear explanations if it’s difficult to assemble. And photographs of the finished build.
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One other consideration is that going through that process will ultimately make people better designers in all of their projects. Self-critique is both the easiest and the hardest thing to do (many people are overly self-critical) - putting “pen to paper” so to speak creates an environment for a more analytical critique.
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I think it would be great to have a way to post in Made on a Glowforge and also link directly to that design in the store, whether it is free or not.
Also a link from the design in the store to the discussion in MoaGF. This would allow for dialogue about how to assemble, or how to paramerterise a design.
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This!
Perfect. A resolution to the issue, though not one that anyone hoped for, posted. Y’all rock 
It feels like things posted in support get locked very quickly, whether the problem is solved or not. Many times theer’s some valuable discussion going on and then a support person pops in and says “closing this, if it happens again, contact us”. This kills the discussion.
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The whole “the lawyers made us move setting for non-PG materials to beyond the manual” is annoying (and certainly inspires me to not post as frequently, because I’m trying to help other folks do similar things, and not posting settings is not helping. Whenever our corporate FNLs (and @Dan, trust me compared to hospital lawyers, yours are not even in the true “risk-adverse” category…) come up with something like this, I demand evidence that a change that will annoy my customers actually is a real thing (like show me case precedents that this actually was ruled on); this is similar to all the absuridity in EULAs where a bunch of folks finally said, show us that any of this was actually enforceable under case-law, and of course most wasn’t, so a lot of EULAs have gotten way simpler. I can’t imagine a judge going “Oh, since they were in a separate thread on the forum, we will dismiss the suit!”…
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Plus 100 
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In general I agree with post of the comments above, but personally I don’t use the categories much. Rather than bounce around the site I typically just check the “Latest” section and read anything that looks interesting. The category labels are sometimes useful for letting me know what to expect when a post isn’t titled descriptively, but other than that I mostly ignore them.
Probably not very helpful to the question at hand but thought I’d mention it since it seems to be different than how most use the forum.
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That’s how I use it. Just keep going until there are no New or Unread left.
I only use the categories when I’m starting a new thread. When I’m reading, I usually don’t know which one I’m in
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i read the same way. but it’s different reading than posting. when you post, you have to choose the proper category.
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I agree on the Idea Hopper. I have been wondering where in this structure it was best to post things like that.
I think its going to need to be either very high standards - everything is guaranteed awesome - or essentially no standards at all with infrastructure for ratings / review. Then possibly some promotion for well received designs. The in between is just too slippery and labor intensive to enforce.
Really it comes downs to the extent they want to supplant Thingiverse, etc for laser, or at least Glowforge specific designs.
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Not having a laser yet, I haven’t had to deal first hand with the Made on a Glowforge/Beyond the Manual dichotomy.
My opinion is that it does not help the users, nor do I see it as a useful distinction leagally–but I am not a lawyer, Friendly Neighborhood or other.
I would suggest that a more useful distinction for BtM would be things that would be egregious warrantee breakers…case mods, adding chillers to Basics, etc.
Failing a change in the posting rules, making it somehow easy to make a two-part post with crosslinks between MoaGF and BtM, or I think I saw someone suggest a “spoiler” type tag to obscure settings and have a “do this at your own risk” message when the settings are revealed.
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This seems like a good way to go. Post a picture and description of something you made and, if you want, link to the design.
My biggest objection to the FLD category is that posting files to a forum is a terrible way to share them. There is no infrastructure for iteration of forking. I rarely have anything I would consider “final” so what happens as I update it. Do I keep posting new versions?
Much better to use Github or Thingiverse or whatever and post a link.
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Music to my ears.
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I agree about the too-fast closing of some discussions. Maybe the GF support people could use the “Solved” checkmark instead, indicating that their response is done, but that we can still natter amongst ourselves.
Non-PG does not mean it goes to Beyond the Manual. But if it’s non-PG, and the material could be a cause of the symptom being reported, then it does. (And you’d be surprised with the many unusual ways that material can be a cause!)
A similar case is exhaust - DIY exhaust solutions can cause many unusual and seemingly unrelated problems.
Indeed, the support team is all about closing out topics; it’s one of the reasons we have a really different approach in Problems & Support vs. the freewheeling rest of the forum. (For the record, I love the rest of the forum!). Any suggestions for improvement?
@henryhbk, this was the concession after much wrangling. You wouldn’t have liked the FNL’s recommendations.
@lawbecke Thanks for the feedback! That’s how I read it too.
@brian1 For now, Problems & Support if you want to submit an idea and then have it closed; Everything Else if you want to spitball an idea around.
@paulw Thanks for the suggestion!
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I don’t want to be getting into semantics but “could be” seems to be jumping the gun on closing a support ticket. The symptom “could also not be” a result of the material used. For example, on the thread from @henryhbk about the image engrave becoming lighter as it progressed upwards:
The immediate reply was that the problem is out of scope because it was non-PG material and that “could be” the cause. It could also not be cause - it hadn’t been established that non-PG was the issue. He was never asked to try to reproduce the error on PG.
Even if support wanted to get the ticket closed, perhaps the suggestion should have been something along the lines of:
I see you are using non-PG material - could you attempt to replicate the issue using Proofgrade? I’m going to close this ticket now, but if it happens again, please open a new thread here in Problems and Support. If not reproducible, it’s more likely a material issue and help can be sought in the Beyond the Manual category from the community.
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