Dear all,

You may or may not be aware of shump.co.uk which is a free online market place originally made for Sheffield University and Hallam University staff and students......

We have had hundreds of emails asking us to make this service available for general use by anyone in Sheffield......

This can be implemented within a day of us deciding to go ahead with it.....so basically the purpose of this post is to find out whether or not the site would be well used by the population of Sheffield....

to see the fucntioning site (which is being used now by staff and students of sheffield) please goto www.shump.co.uk/index.php

The site for all of Sheffield will be very similar to this....

Please post here and/or vote in the poll.

Best regards

SHUMP

:o :o
I've been at sheffield university for 5 years now and didn't even know that this site existed!!!!!

Yes it was only launched about 4 weeks ago......you will see posters up now all over the place!

For some reason, most of our users are from Hallam.......

ah ok that would explain it then!
I'm only a student there for another 3 weeks anyway :(

get yourself registered then!

Has this been endorsed in any way by the University?

There are already some dodgy deals being advertised.
For example:
Tickets that the seller does not expect until December but wants payment now!!
Creatine at £40/kg which can be bought easily for £30.
Pyramid Marketing masquarading as an item for sale!
SCART lead for £2. Depending on quality could be bought for £1 at Maplin.
A 1-year old Ricoh camera at a higher price than I can buy new at Jacobs.

A site that presents itself as being exclusive for students/staff implies a level of preference which would make for opportunities that they would not get elsewhere.
This would not appear to be the case.

Caveat emptor --- Buyer beware!

cgksheff,

Thanks for comments. Regarding involvement with the universities, yes we have gone through the proper channels which include inland revenue and companies house, and permission of various departments in the University.

Just for your interest the law states "You cannot name a company that in any way presents itself as being official of a government body, educational establishment, town, city, county, country etc etc"....so even "sheffieldforum" is quite possible illegal as a name, however you have to use some common sense on these issues. SHUMP and "universities" are perfectly legal.

Regarding the items, the site is an open market place and it is entirely up to our registered users as to which items they put up and what prices they ask for (as in any retail outlet.)

"exclusive" in this sense means that the site can only be used by staff and students, it doesnt imply anything other than that. However, as we state on the "about" pages, as we have grown, the service is being offered to numerous cities.

I would like to emphasize that the site is free to use!


I hope this answers your queries.

Thanks again.

SHUMP

Thanks for replying.

I asked about "endorsement" and you have avoided the question.

Since you mentioned it, what permissions do you actually have?

Are you happy that items are being placed, pretending to be available for sale or auction, when in fact they simply provide links to pyramid marketing sites?

Can you expand upon what you mean by "overwhelming success" as claimed on your site?

Originally posted by cgksheff


Are you happy that items are being placed, pretending to be available for sale or auction, when in fact they simply provide links to pyramid marketing sites?



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As seen here (http://www.shump.co.uk/view.php?id=47)

It may be a good idea to look at a level of moderating to avoid this.

It is entirely up to our users what they put up as adverts. As I stated before, its an open marketplace.

Dare i say it, but ebay has numerous adverts of that type.

We do however monitor the items and use our common sense if something is offensive......however knowing the excellent nature of Sheffields staff and students, this wont ever happen!

I think you'd be better keeping it within the universities. I imagine it would be easier that way.

Leave this sort of thing to the Sheffield Forum. It's very well organised by the official moderators and hundreds of thread jumpers who'll make it clear in no uncertain terms if the post is a rip off!

And some of the software looks like dodgy pirated stuff too. Strange how you don't get a box, just a CD and some 'installation instructions'.

Originally posted by Shump
Regarding the items, the site is an open market place and it is entirely up to our registered users as to which items they put up and what prices they ask for (as in any retail outlet.)


I would seriously have a look into the pirated stuff being sold, as you might be partly responsible when the police turn up, thats why Ebay doesn't allow pirated stuff, it's not morals, it's against the law.

More than anything, I would question the "endorsement" from "The University" or "Hallam".

You would appear to have a good idea in creation.
However, 30 items for sale/auction of which 10% are pyramid sales, is nothing to get worked up about.

I doubt if records are kept, but I would wager that more items are sold through this website without as much hassle.

Originally posted by cgksheff
More than anything, I would question the "endorsement" from "The University" or "Hallam".



The university is shef.ac.uk so this must be third party run...

Also I work at the university and have never heard of this! So I am dubious too.

Originally posted by Shump
It is entirely up to our users what they put up as adverts.

You are ultimately responsible for the content of your domain/website.

Originally posted by sccsux
You are ultimately responsible for the content of your domain/website.

i completely agree with that. i also find it impressive that there are apparently 120 books posted on the site yet when you click to view them there are only 7...

these type of market places seem to be springing up left right and centre at the moment, though if you compare the items posted on shump (these "pyramid site" type advertisers) with those posted on www.boso.co.uk there is a fairly big difference.

i was involved with starting up www.boso.co.uk a while ago now, before other sites like shump appeared, and we created an environment that was secure enough to prevent any of these dodgy sites being able to post adverts. even after we had national press coverage from The Times, Guardian and BBC (http://www.boso.co.uk/blog/) the site still remained clean.

actually the only dodgy site that managed to advertise on boso was last night, when the founder of shump decided to place a big ad for "www.shump.co.uk, 4500 users, come register!" fortunately we have a nice community feel and our own users told us about this and we took it down. otherwise it's all been clean (non-students can use boso to buy items as well btw).

anyway, i'm sure there are far more interesting things to talk about than student marketplaces!

hi, i'm a university student at the sheffield university and i think the website should be encouraged by the sheffforum. If it's full of adverts for pyramid marketing schemes it's probably because they haven't enough moderators and/or buyers making these adverts an issue. With more support students might be able to find a better deal and not get ripped off. The sheffield Forum is a fantastic and (mostly) safe environment to buy things from on the cheap, for sheffielders and people visiting the city, but this shouldn't prevent someone else having a good bash at something which i support as 'open-market' rtail as opposed to paying through the nose for textbooks from places like blackwells. i can assure you also that i've heard tons about it at uni and it's kosher, just a little under-publicised if you don't read your e-mails! (Hint: Maybe more posters should be put up!)
but yeah, when i first heard about it i thought it sounded like a great idea and a rival to Ebay and also could present an easier option for searching for specific items rather than ploughing through posts on the classifieds.
i say support it, because the more visitors to the site the more it will have to 'grow' as an efficient site and as a coolmarket place.
Tori
x

Tori,

I think the issue that a lot of folks on SF have had with shump is that it was not available to most of our users!

SF's users are, on the whole, NOT students, not university staff and hence NOT entitled to use shump. :)

It's a shame that shump originally chose to be a closed environment; to work as a market place a website needs to be able to have sellers and buyers. If you restrict your membership in any way, then you restrict the opportunity of that market place to grow.

Joe

ahhhh.... i see. Then it should definately be open to ALL Sheffielders. It would mean more stuff for sale and to buy anyway (and that's gotta be a good thing;) well if Shump are paying attention to the good folk of Sheffield and students alike they'll take that on board...

Tori.:thumbsup: