Talk:CafePress.com

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the CafePress.com article.
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[edit] Article started

Dratz, I was thinking of starting the article, but yeah, we need an article on cafepress. --Saint-Paddy 23:03, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] suggested improvements

a little busy right now myself, but couldn't notice what a sad state one of Wikimedia's allies is in. I'll be back later, but what this article could use is: some sort of statement on the effect of CafePress in the internet retail industry, a comparison to significant competitors, headings and a table of contents, a verification of current facts and statistics--looks like many were taken off of an "about us" page, rather than seriously looked into Warofwrath 05:36, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

i second that... the article partly sounds to me like a press release or a description you'd see in the WSJ. i'm curious about info like pros, cons, if they own the design you submit (discussion of TOS (which i haven't read)), ANYTHING interesting and noteworthy. i might have to look into this in the future Plonk420 08:16, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

How about some information on the effect on quality of the prints due to the mass printing? AnonymousOrc 04:54, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps some newspapers have done critiques of cafe press. It isn't verifiable to wikipedia standards to simply say that some people think that cafe press is at or below the quality of home made laser printed iron ons, and that the base prices are far above the price of a laser printed iron on and a t-shirt. This is a careful distinction on policy on wikipedia. It is "verifiable" on a personal level that some people think cafe press quality is far below their base prices, because, well, that's what I think. However, verifiability comes from trusted news sources. At this time, I am not a trusted news source. But Cafe Press is a big company, I'm sure there have been news worthy or even scholarly reviews of it. On an unrelated note, I think spreadshirt is better. That's all for me. Philthecoffeejerk 04:00, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hindunet link

I'm removing the link from 59.144.* to [1] again. It does not follow our NPOV policy, and is not a notable event for Cafepress. Cafepress claims it has, as of this writing, 11 million products. Some of those products are intentionally offensive. Even being genenerous with this petition, the offensiveness of a single design is no more appropriate for this article than the offensiveness of a single Yahoo! Group would be to that article. - RedWordSmith 17:58, July 24, 2005 (UTC)

These products offend an entire religion. It would be similar to having an anti-semetic product for sale. It's different from having an "All your oil are belong to US" t-shirt. This becomes even more important in the context of such products and products having images of Hindu gods on shoes making it to France and US and Hindu groups in those countries managing to persuade the sellers take the products off sale.1. It was due to efforts of the same organisation (AHAD). So it's worth mentioning after all. I'm putting it back. If you have any objections to it, please mention it in the talk page before removing it.
Yes, I do still object to the presence of that link. There are, without doubt, plenty of other designs that offend entire religions on Cafepress. One particular shopkeeper in the forums pointed to a design she came up with that had Jesus on the cross with a thought bubble that had "I wish I had a California jury" in it, and specifically said that she thought it would offend her conservative Christian friends. While CafePress's TOS (www.cafepress.com/cp/info/help/shopkeepers_agreement.aspx & www.cafepress.com/cp/info/help/content_policy.aspx) prohibit "Material that is generally offensive or in bad taste", I would nonetheless be shocked if there weren't at least a few items on CafePress that are offensive from any particular religious perspective. Really, the worst thing that can be said about them is that they're an open forum outside of particularly egregiously content. - RedWordSmith 01:07, July 26, 2005 (UTC)
A thong containing an image of a deity is different from an image mimicking a religious event. And the thong wasn't "meant" to be offensive. But that's not my point. I'm sure it would be absolutely no big deal in the US if they sold thongs containing pictures of Jesus Christ. My point is that it *is* a big deal among Hindus. Previous such incidents have made it to the front pages of national newspapers here in India. (News of this particular instance is also spreading fast and might make to the newspapers.) So, regardless of whether this should be an issue or not, it is one. It's like the GTA hot coffee episode. A lot of people consider it to be a non-issue, but it made it to the headlines anyway and now it's in the wikipedia article. So my point is that it is big enough to be mentioned. As for the TOS, I didn't say it was CafePress' fault or that they're not doing enough. If my link description is POV in any way, please go ahead and modify it to make it more NPOV. All I'm saying is that this is worth mentioning.
It still seems like a minor event to me as far as the company history is concerned, but I won't press the issue any further for the time being. - RedWordSmith 22:26, July 26, 2005 (UTC)
OK, I thought about it and removed it. Guess I'll put it back only if a major development happens, like AHAD sends zombies to Cafepress or something.

[edit] Afflilate links

(Moved from article comments)

I wrote: Changing the link to the Wikipedia Shop to an affiliate link is THEFT from the commision that belongs to the Foundation and will not be looked upon kindly - RWS

And 216.23.61.* responded: An affiliate link is in no way theft, if Wikiepdia does not want people to be able to link to them as an affiliate then they can remove themselves from the affiliate program, read the TOS for cafepress. Wikipedia does not earn any comission by sending people to cafepress from the first link (they did not have an affiliate cose for themselves there). The second link will earn comission for them becuase those are their products, but as an affiliate anyone has the right, per cafepress's TOS, to put any affiliate code at the end of the link. Wikipeida has agreed to the TOS and to those terms, I suggest you read up on the matter if you have any questions.

(End moved)

All of this simply means that anyone can create an affiliate link to the Wikipedia store, NOT necessarily on Wikipedia itself. While "theft" may not have been a technically accurate term, my understanding is that when people use an affililate link the storeowner's commission is reduced. Thus, an affiliate link to the Wikipedia store in a Wikipedia article uses Wikipedia resources to enrich the affiliate at the expense of Wikipedia, with no added benefit to the project. This is true even for other Cafeshops in other articles, when they are actually appropriate, as Wikipedia could possibly have its own affilate links autogenerated from plain links at some point in the future, similar to the way that ISBN numbers work now. I suppose profiteering would be a more accurate term for this sort of behavior; whatever it is, it's rude and clearly detrimental. At any rate, trying to sneak in an affiliate id will just lead to a bunch of editwarring over whose affiliate link to use. - RedWordSmith 03:35, 12 March 2006 (UTC)


If this were the Wikipedia page on Wikipedia then I could agree about the profiteering charge. However this page is about Cafepress, and someone thought it appropriate to include the link to Wikipedia's store (not Wikipedia). Furthermore Wikipedia the coporation has agreed to let people link to them with affiliate links per their agreement with Cafepress (leghlly binding). Cafepress's position on this matter (which Wikipedia has agreed to) is that any traffic brought by an affiliate is not profiteering, or theft, but rather a sale that would not otherwise have been made. Since this specific page is about Cafepress and not wikipedia it is analogous to an independent webpage. Therefor in the view of Cafepress per their TOS this is a legitimate place to have an affiliate link. Its important that you understand that Wikipedia has agreed to this practice. If they wish to not let people link to their products from here or other websites they need to change their settings in their shop perferences to opt-out of the affiliate program. I will agree with you that in retrospect it is a good idea to keep affiliate links off this and other similar pages because it might start an editing war over the links, but technically Wikipedia will have to opt out of their agreement with Cafepress over the affiliate program to really stop it.

Jameson K. 17:51, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] CafePress.com vs CafePress

CafePress.com is the name of the article, yet the name of the website is simply CafePress. I think the article should be moved to CafePress. – SilverBulletx3talkcontributions 16:53, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

The article isn't about the website, it's about the company, and having had a look, the name of the company is "CafePress.com". It's a good job I checked because I nearly went ahead and made the move anyway :)  -- Run!  14:55, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What is CafePress like?

I don't know if this is the place where you can tell me or not, but I was considering using this. I'm not concerned with the quality of their items so much as the quality of their service. Is it a trustworthy site and do they deliver their products properly? As far as quality goes, though, how are their books? The clothing is not as big an issue. Do the books look okay and hold fine or do they fall apart and such?

I don't know, I've never used them personally, but most people I hear talk about it seem to do so in a negative way.[2] Bawolff 09:31, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I have used this website one time and it was for ordering items......I selected a 2 day shipping option and it has been almost 5 days since I have placed my order. I have since attempted to go to the site to try and contact them but it will not come up anymore? Suspicious? Anyone know of any ideas or if they moved the site? Thanks.

[edit] Competitors, and linking thereof

The seealso redlinks are bad enough, but including external links to competitors is ridiculous. If there needs to be a master page for online shops of this type then a new article should be started, instead of hijacking this one. Chris Cunningham (talk) 14:02, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Intellectual property and CafePress

Many of the designs on cafepress are blatantly the intellectual property of a person or organization other than the "creator" or cafepress. Have there been any court cases or cease and desist orders issued against cafepress? I'll scrounge around, but I haven't found anything yet... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.59.100.246 (talk) 13:07, 16 March 2008 (UTC)