Ultimately what will happen, if the GF forums continue to make it difficult to share information, is that people will move to 3rd Party options (Facebook, Reddit, Private Groups) and the control moves out of GF’s hand completely.
On one hand i can imagine this might please the lawyers, i am not sure that GF would like the narrative and focus to drift away from them though.
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While I agree, perhaps a better idea would to make a special “showcase” thread that only moderators can copy posts too. Make it a true showcase and let the other area roam more free-form.
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Very slippery slope that occurs when a company creates a forum. Policies, enforcements and maintenance just eat up time that people are already busy about trying to get their work done elsewhere.
Just watching the Facebook groups trying to maintain or fire fight the arguments/trolls gets exhausting.
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@teditz …
Wanted to let you know…I tried this out Monday, and my results weren’t nearly as spectacular as yours, but sadly I suspect my initial photo is just too low of a resolution to work as well. 
I’m going to try it one more time with quarter inch acrylic to see if it gives more depth to the engrave…I just tested it on scrap 1/8". Thanks for the instructions though, it still looks a lot better than some of the wood results, so a bit more tweaking and I might have a couple of key fobs for the kids. 
Sorry it didn’t come out as well.
Hope yoy get the settings down.
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Oh it’s definitely the photo - it presents challenges. The technique is excellent, so thanks for sharing it.
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Not a problem. Actually, my wife wanted to use the one off fb and I told her to have the original emailed to her. Much better.
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Totally agree and wouldn’t have even suggested it, except for the way they are trying to moderate “Made on a Glowforge” and “Beyond the Manuel.” From my perspective, the way they are moderating those two is making this more complicated and frustrating already (obviously). So, one option would be to back-track and not be so worried about “non-standard” settings in posts (put a big disclaimer to that end on top of the “Made on a Glowforge”), or do something else, like a moderated “showcase” that doesn’t require any additional policing or understanding by the community. Let’s face it. 99% of the people who first look at these forums will think - “Made on a Glowforge,” that’s where everyone posts the stuff they made. “Beyond the Manual” will be tech stuff that most won’t be interested in. Tying these two together, to me at least, just doesn’t seem effective.
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I will also chime in with a hearty “This is amazing” for the image on the right.
Seems a shame so much of this thread is not about the project at all.
But, to join THAT conversation… I had PM’d Dan suggesting that Made on a Glowforge be renamed to “Proofgrade Productions” because of seeing this same drama in other threads as well.
But… their stance of wanting you to share even non-Proofgrade projects in this area flies in the face of that one…
Maybe the FNL’s would be happy with a spoiler tag custom built to hide non-default settings. Then people can post a single presentation of their project, with their settings that they are so amazingly awesome to be willing to share with the rest of us, and there can still be some level of disclaimer/barrier to immediate use by neophytes who need warned that matches are flammable and scissors are sharp…
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Wow. Okay… So I apparently missed something in my time away. This whole “No settings” thing is brand spanking new to me and I’ll tell you right now: regardless of whatever Glowforge needs to do to cover their butts legally, trying to micro manage the forum users (or having other forum users police everyone) seems like it would create a much less welcoming & educational environment about their product. I get that they want to keep things organized, but I don’t know anyone who would truly believe because something is “Made on a Glowforge” that it automatically means “100% endorsed by Glowforge.” A forum user says, “Here’s what I did” and someone else tries it and burns their house down it’s nobody’s fault but their own. I guess this is the kind of junk you can expect when you get lawyers involved?
I should probably read whatever the new “Rules” are before I go making statements like this, but I will say if this is the case they need a MUCH better way to communicate it to everyone because I’ve been seasonally active here and I knew nothing about it. Honestly, if I’m a forum user and they don’t want me posting setting in a particular category but want it instead to appear in another category, then I see it being the responsibility of whoever is administrating the forums to move it. I could care less what category my junk gets posted in, I’m just trying to be helpful, share what I learn, and learn from others.
To be honest, if someone starts commenting to me on what I can and can’t say and where I can/can’t say it, I’ll just leave. I don’t have the time to sit around and try to be helpful only to be policed on where I can & can’t help (especially when if it’s important to Glowforge that it’s in a particular category, then it’s important enough they get someone to simply move the posts where they belong or remove them—which again, too many of my posts just get removed because I put it in the wrong place and I’ll just keep my learning to myself. And honestly, alienating your forum users like that seems like the perfect scenario for someone to screw up and sue Glowforge all because they didn’t know any better from learning from others.
Sorry, rant over. I was just surprised by all these comments and I’ve got other stuff I could be doing instead of worrying about posting here. Guess I have some reading to go catch up on (somewhere in the 250 unread new posts on here that I missed in the past few weeks…)
EDIT: Ha… so case in point. I spent all this time ranting instead of reading and I just saw @dan’s comment above. Sorry for the negative tone of this comment, and I know you guys have a lot going on. Suffice it to say I guess my posts from now on (if I even post anything anymore) will simply be “I made this” and a pic. The struggle is if I see something and post a question now I’m not even sure if that person can legitimately answer me without having to jump through hoops or change categories just to be able to explain—something they likely don’t have time for, and may not even be the original poster’s fault that others started discussing things without realizing what category it was under (I always just go to “NEW” and look at posts, so I never know what category I’m in or if it would be okay to discuss settings now).
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It’s a fairly recent thing. The Made on a Glowforge category is a concession to us to allow us to share the settings that so many people have been wanting so badly, for the last year.
But we have to keep them in there. Not a big deal.
I’m sure you’re right about it not being a big deal. I just know when my unit arrived I knew nothing, and the helpful posts in these forums allowed me to get up to speed incredibly fast. As right/necessary as it may be for Glowforge to make these changes, I can tell you every single user here just got stunted in their ability to grow from these forums by the simple fact that someone won’t share what they could have now—I know I won’t—because it was an extra step or two or three to do it, or because the last time they did they got a “gentle reminder” and it made them feel a little bit stupid for sharing in the wrong place.
Guess I better go clean up nearly every one of my posts that I’ve made or commented on, so they’re in the right place now.
It JUST changed - why feel bad about sharing something in the place where everything has been shared since the beginning?
We’ll get used to it as time goes on - it’s really not something to fret over. 
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What do you mean we’re not allowed to ask beta people questions about their projects?
Except I don’t really remember anyone having a problem with that one. It’s the same general idea. GF wants to control what’s going on in certain scenarios.
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from the very beginning gf didn’t want people pestering beta users about things. prus have always been fine to interrogate.
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I tell you what, I enjoyed the interaction with folks and sharing my experience when I got the PRU but I constantly had to keep tempering my enthusiasm because there were so many folks eager for information and only so much of me. I put a lot of hours into the Glowforge and even more in communicating that on the forum. The more time I spent on the forum meant the less time I had designing stuff.
I think that the etiquette toward settings should be the same way regarding design files: don’t ask if they aren’t offered. People might be best served by the specific topics that show how to approach testing a material for settings.
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