"The "mass collaboration" (a component of the definition) comes from the voting side, not the submission side. Well, thats not entirely true. They have a critique section, where people can submit designs and get feedback from the community prior to submitting them for voting. With threadless, the jury is the community. They select, via vote, the top designs, of which some are selected to print. Its in their best interest, that the shirts sell, so that it validates the entire process. It is, in the strictest sense of the definition, crowdsourcing. Does it have competitive components? Sure. Is it a strict competition? No. Is Wikipedia? Sure. A person can make changes, and the hope is that another member of the community will correct mistakes. The community as a whole, will ensure that the information is correct because its in their best interest that the information contained in the Wikipedia." - Micah Baldwin