Now where did I put the $25 Word dictionary when I need it… 
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A statement like this is an example of a red flag that brings out the strong reactions and chilling speech responses.
This really conflates two totally different issues and pushes two buttons for those whose first impulse is to defend Glowforge: that Glowforge is dishonest and that their development strategy was incompetent.
I would say: early they pushed an ideal or state of production that was at odds with the development reality. I can agree that this brings up a question of honesty and transparency. Given the degree with which Dan has interacted with the forum and the way the forum participated in future development, I wouldn’t say lie or dishonest. But then again, that isn’t my style of communication. I’m not blunt. Would make a bad lead engineer. My glasses have too much of a rose tint.
As to development: another red flag is attributing the state of a feature, the lack of a feature or the feature choice implementation to poor engineering and/or incompetent development strategy. In the discussion of back to front engraving, some of the comments imply that Glowforge must not have thought of this feature if it hasn’t appeared in a published feature set. That is one way to evaluate the situation. Another way is that this feature was early on discounted because of x,y, z complications or ramifications that for the Glowforge’s main marketing and development thrust didn’t make sense to implement regardless of whether or not it would take time and resources.
Glowforge is making a machine that you can buy the designs that just work. They supply the materials that just work. They provide a simple interface that just works with the designs and materials.
All other considerations would be secondary and out of the focus of development. And speaking of focus. Tracing and cutting/engraving works very well and very accurately. Is it a failure because it can’t do a 12x20 grid perfectly?
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Since they didn’t do it that way, ergo @dan and GF are dishonest. Q.E.D.
No you didn’t say in these words “Dan’s a crook” but you did say it pretty explicitly.
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And this example
palmercr
4d
Jules:
sly innuendo that @dan and Glowforge are somehow dishonest.
Palmercr: It isn’t sly innuendo, history has shown them to be dishonest time and time again. I.e, reality, not my personal opinion.
They went to BAMF and sold GFs on the basis that they were shipping and the previous time scales would be met. About two weeks later shipping started and as soon as three were received the new time scales were revealed. Not surprisingly that caused an immediate cancellation.
I predicted that would happen in this forum. So my views are no more negative than reality.
Sorry I suck at quotes and links from my phone
I understand that completely but it goes both ways. There are people like me that dont post much at all because if you have anything doubting or slightly negative, the collective seems to jump all over you.
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op:
don’t hate, y’all!
thread:
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^^ Can confirm.
Indeed. The team’s done an amazing job, though, and any fault for these lies squarely with me. (see point above)[quote=“Drea, post:8, topic:8818”]
People have a right to be upset about those factors
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And I really agree with this. Nobody gets flagged or called out by me for being critical or for expressing their frustration with me. There’s very little room for criticizing others on the board, though. If I see more than one flag on a comment that’s critical of another board member, I generally take action.
(Note that I generally only take action on posts that are flagged, so that my judgment isn’t the only one involved). [quote=“elsman18, post:10, topic:8818”]
getting dumped on over copyright laws.
[/quote]
Please note that violating copyright is against forum policy. When someone does it, it sometimes results in us being served legal notice, which wastes our time and dollars that we want to use making your product better. (Yes, it does happen!)
Please do this. As mentioned above, it’s the only way this stays civil. A flag brings my attention to it, and if there are multiple flags, I know action’s needed.
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It’s statements like this that imply those of us asking for a grid test are out to prove that the Forge is a failure. That is not our goal. We simply want to understand the limitations of the tool as it now stands, and provide benchmarks for its improvement over time. Nothing nefarious as you are implying.
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What? I point out incontrovertible documentary evidence that the original marketing was dishonest and people think that is beyond the pale.
Yes exactly. Do you have another explanation or perhaps a different definition of honesty?
I cannot comprehend how people can look at the same evidence and think that it is not dishonesty. It’s like you are all arguing black is white or I am in a bad dream or something. There seems to be an alternate reality in this forum.
I have never said their development strategy was incompetent. If you look at the project time line published with the June update then it looks plausible but still very quick to develop something this complex and revolutionary from prototype to high volume production with world wide safety approvals. If they pull it off, while at the same time having to build up the company and find a production partner, that will be a remarkable achievement, with a lot of it down to Dan’s vision and leadership.
If they had launched the campaign in March 17 saying " Preorder Your Glowforge at 50% Off
Early bird pricing available for a limited time only. Shipping June 2017." then I would have nothing but praise.
But they actually said “Preorder Your Glowforge at 50% Off Early bird pricing available for a limited time only. Shipping December 2015.” which was totally impossible to achieve, not wildly optimistic or naive, but totally impossible far many reasons. Even when they changed it to betas in Dec15 they must have known they would not finish in the first half of 2016. Every update after that they continued to say they were on target long after they knew they were not.
I don’t see how you can say it works accurately if it can’t do a 12 x 20 grid? Those two statements seem mutually exclusive. If you are placing a design in the corner of a sheet, which is the most logical place, then you would have to leave margin equal to the inaccuracy or risk your design going over the edge, or colliding with another cut.
And when you are tracing around an existing print to cut it out it needs to be very accurate to not look wrong.
So when it says “Glowforge’s onboard cameras can cut & engrave directly over top of your drawing.” and it is 1/4" off then I would say they have not achieved number one super power yet. But the examples were PRUs, I have yet to see a production machine run the test. I am sure people have shown much better alignment, even with PRUs. However the grid is a non-subjective test that tests linearity of the whole bed at once. I would guess that there is a factory alignment where they place a known grid in the machine. Either that or they shoot the honey comb.
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Yes just seen it. Very strange result.
But totally explained by using 10 LPI raster engraving.
Note that I posted the alignment test showing pretty poor alignment (e.g. a negative post) at the edges just using optical alignment and didn’t get dumped on. Why? Well because I didn’t imply dan is a jerk, didn’t imply GF is dishonest or is trying to take our money, or all the other things that get thrown in. And if someone commented “hey, that looks like xxxx effect” nobody would argue. And if you even posted “that seems pretty poor alignment, hey, I sure hope that’s a priority fix for GF” probably everyone would agree. The problem is most of the consistently negative posts go with “hey, that looks like xxxx effect, and because that exists GF dev guys are incompetent and they are lying to us due to not fulfilling original promises [with citation from crowdfunding post]”
The other major problem with negative postings is many of them are new posters who seem to not realize there is a search button under the magnifying glass at the top. Now admittedly there are plenty of buried posts with the massive post-count at this point, but some are such basic rants that have already been addressed (and many beaten to death). You will see “you can’t do XXXX with the GF” (often from someone who doesn’t have a GF) and one of us will search and cite the relevant post where in fact someone was done XXXX, in which case instead of admitting failure to search, they double down and go “yeah, but that required way more work than was promised [devolve into same GF incompetent stuff]”
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Are you actually saying that your negative post experience is the same as everyone on the forum? Not everyone that gets shouted down is implying incompetence or dishonesty. Even if they were, dishonesty in my eyes is pretty evident and is a valid counter point to a lot of the cheerleading that happens here. People seem to complain about the naysayers but honestly I’m happy there are at least some people willing to go against overly optimistic grain.
Many of these posts get ragged on for being “beat to death” but not everyone is here everyday. And often times a topic is beat to death because there is a valid criticism to be made that despite all this time, has still gone unaddressed. To someone like me, it could stand to be addressed again if only to demonstrate that the powers that be don’t care to address it.
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This is not against you but rather a general annoyance with forum culture. It has always been a pet peeve of mine as there is no way to win.
If you have a question that has been touched on before and you post a new topic, you get lambasted for not using the search function. But if your specific question was never actually answered in the old discussions and you revive the thread to get your query addressed you end up getting attacked for necro-ing dead threads. There is no way to win.
I know in your case you’re speaking of something that you feel IS addressed and Im not saying it happens here specifically, but it is such annoyance in general with forum culture.
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And that’s OK, just A) search for the original topic rather than skipping 200 comments already made and making a new post, so we don’t have to repeat them, and B) it’s totally valid to complain that something wasn’t addressed if it can be.
What often happens is someone will keep going after dan or someone says “it’s in the hopper” or “we won’t comment on that”. It’s like watching the news guys go after a spokesperson after they say no comment. Really, they mean no comment, and asking the same question repeatedly gets no comment repeatedly.
There are lots of things that don’t work as advertised, and absolutely reasonable to call them out publicly (please search to make sure they haven’t already). But once you get either “it’s in the dev queue” or “no comment” continued bashing on the topic (without further insight) just is beating it to death without any chance of further advancement.
Really? Dishonesty? As in willful intent to deceive us? As in my example earlier you are saying dan has said alignment is working perfectly and I and others demonstrated it’s not? No, they said it will eventually, and now it doesn’t. Folks are annoyed that we are now in production and it’s not a finished feature. Am I annoyed by that? yes. do I think there is a willful intent to deceive me? no.
There is a big difference between true dishonesty and schedule slipping due to overoptimism. No company ever delivers on time with all the functionality as promised and at price. You can have 2 of the 3.
Actually in this forum at least older threads get revived all the time, and people don’t jump on folks (well except for folks who searched for a topic, and didn’t read the posts first).
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I think this is probably true of most topics or posts that annoy people, either “cheerleading” or critical. I’ve seen both sides. Where someone posts something negative, and they get jumped on. And where someone posts cheerleadingly, and they get jumped on. For example, the whole “If you aren’t happy, you can cancel posts”, because it feels dismissive. But that’s probably because I’ve seen it a hundred times. If the person they’re responding to hasn’t seen it before, and isn’t aware, that’s pretty useful, pertinent information.
But, holy cow, sometimes it makes me want to punch a kitten. And I’m sure the same is true of people who have read the same criticism over and over.
There’s probably a really interest group dynamic case study in here somewhere.
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probably, although as was mentioned earlier, all these drama llama fights are pretty much par for the course in every internet forum, purchase-required or not.
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Hence why I said “im not saying it happens here specifically”
This is a forum. You’re essentially saying that I have no voice simply because someone has already shared my point of view. I am allowed to share my own perspective even if it annoys you to see yet another person sharing it. I don’t see any limits on people parroting the same positive point of views endlessly. No one is telling the cheerleaders to use the search function when they praise the machine in a way that it has already been praised.
Yes. I don’t know what situation you’re talking about specifically but to me it is clear they have been dishonest. Those original delivery estimates are completely dishonest in my opinion. No chance they were ever going to be made. I think holding back the ‘bad news’ update until they start shipping a few units is also dishonest. I think constantly saying they cant devote peoples time to some of the issues forum goers have, because they are “too busy building glowforges” and then continuing to hit many of the makerfaires and expo-like events is dishonest.
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You are welcome to say whatever your perspective is. As you point out this is a forum, and like any public forum of ideas, there is a culture and ethos on conversation. I would concur this one is more tilted towards positive rather than negative things, but that is the culture. And it is a forum so push back on repeated negative comments, is equally valid to expressing them. I do concur there is a little hyped pixie dust on much of the positivity, but I find that on many crowdfunded tech products.
OK, shipping dates are always ridiculous. I admit this one is a bit longer than other large tech crowd funded objects I have participated in, but not by that much. My smaller CNC was many, many months longer than stated (even after “shipping” occurred, and was fatally flawed such that it is something I now use as a dummy for show and tell in maker course on what a CNC looks like, since it won’t even power up). My SLA printer is well over a year over due, and despite it having shipped, even that was supposed to deliver right after chinese new years (still no arrival), and despite hundreds of units sold, so far I have seen 5 in the wild online. As for my 3D printer it was a year late, from an existing vendor with a solid reputation; right after it arrived, they made a V1.1 which was not just a tiny bug fix, but actually delivered the promised build volume, and there was no easy upgrade short of laser cutting your frame again. You can do it like google, and be in a perpetual state of beta (gmail was in beta for how many years?) in which case you never have to make the statement.
As for people to fix customer requests vs trade shows, I would assume marketing does the shows while the dev team does dev. Now I agree some of these tasks seem oriented towards a summer high-school intern, and it is somewhat a corporate cop-out to say we are working so hard we can’t handle any spare bandwidth, either implies you are running too lean for your stated workload, you are doing something secret in the background that is consuming your spare cycles like a V2 or whatever, or you just don’t want to do the requested thing, and this is the excuse (similar to the lawyers won’t let us or our insurance doesn’t allow it, are also things most companies use).
Again, wording choice matters here. holding back the bad news until a few units shipped (likely a few days or week maybe?) seems to be A) what any reasonable CEO would do, B) what is least likely to result in corporate harm, C) good marketing sense and D) poor communication to your customer base (D is not mutually exclusive with A, B and C sadly). Most of marketing is of course buttering over the bad parts of your product with the good parts. So I wouldn’t again use the word dishonest. Poor communication strategy or poor communication (period) is a reasonable charge, and I will note when that charge was articulated in a large block of posts earlier in the year, dan acknowledged the issue and promised to think about how they could be better, and did in fact get better (nowhere as communicative as he could be, but it was a large improvement - well it had little to go but up); use the word dishonest though and you will get a defensive response (as if someone called you a liar - since that what calling someone dishonest means) as opposed to “your communication on this topic really left a bad taste in all our mouths from trying to smother significant bad news in with the smattering of good”, which would likely produce a much more productive discussion and in fact has a solution; calling someone a liar doesn’t have much of a solution.
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