Talk:Zazzle

Google did not invest

I do believe this article is incorrect. To me it did not seem that Google invested in Zazzle. The Stellar Bay source got it wrong. Moreover, the case is that John Doerr invested the $16 millon. That same John Doerr was one of the first investors in Google, which probably is where the confusion comes from. http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jul2005/tc20050721_5428_tc057.htm —Preceding unsigned comment added by Andersrask1977 (talk • contribs) 18:53, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Advertising problem

Every so often, since about the end of April (2008 - in case people are reading this is in 6 months or later), this article has had a problem with anonymous IPs and brand new accounts (that only ever make one single edit, to this page) adding links to what is presumably their own individual Zazzle store, listing it as an "example" or "sample" user store. Even if this wasn't a blatant attempt at advertisement, it's pointless, as if a user wishes to see what Zazzle stores are like, that user can simply click the link to the main Zazzle site and do a little exploring. And either way, it's against policy, and gets quickly reverted.

So far it's not been a giant problem, averaging about one such link a month, which gets reverted anywhere between 22 minutes and a little over 13 hours after it was added... but it is rather a nuisance. So, I've added an HTML comment in the external links section (diff), invisible when simply reading the article, which asks editors "Please DO NOT add links to individual Zazzle stores here, as it counts as advertising (even if you add it as an "example store"), which is against Wikipedia policy. Any such links will be quickly removed" - maybe we can hope that these editors simply don't know it's against Wikipedia policy, and upon reading this, will think twice about adding their link.

I do hope this wasn't an incorrect action for me to take, as I can't easily find any Wikipedia policy page on adding HTML comments in situations like these (searching for "comment" in Wikipedia namespace turns up a silly amount of "Request for comments", so even if there is such a page, I can't think of search terms that wouldn't drown out the relevant page). However, I have seen other pages with such problems add similar HTML comments. If it doesn't stop this problem, or the problem gets worse, then perhaps I should request that the article be semi-protected so these anonymous IPs and brand new (seemingly throwaway) accounts can't keep adding these links? What do others think of asking for semi-protection, and of me adding the HTML comment - right things to do, or not? Xmoogle (talk) 14:35, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

HTML-style comments in mediawiki markup are stripped before a page is displayed, so that won't work unless you put it in <nowiki> tags. In any case, I doubt it would discourage Anonymous from adding those links much, and is a bad violation of the law of beans. Just add this page to your watchlist or get ammo crates for Huggle. ~ Jafet _{Speaker of many words} 10:20, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Semi-protection prevents anonymous users from editing an article. Which is fine for a complete, well-written article or one experiencing heavy vandalism or silliness. As far as I know semi-prot in the mainspace is always intended to be a short-term stopgap. ~ Jafet _{Speaker of many words} 10:26, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

I've added a link to the Zazzle "Featured Brands" page (Star Wars, Looney Tunes, Disney, Barbie). I think that adds useful info regarding the company's notability, and if people really want to look at sample shops, the company's own selection of notable sample shops is just one click away from that page. It might mean that there's less reason for people to feel the need to link their own shops as examples. Maybe. ErkDemon (talk) 16:47, 7 February 2009 (UTC)