mrbunny@mail.zynet.co.uk wrote:
> 
> First, many thanks to those who responded positively to my request for
> information.
> 
> Having posted a request to assist my  computer studies (See simple
> student problem). I have been e-mailed to tell me that I have made an
> "inconsiderate mistake" and that if this news group was open to
> students there would be many thousands of postings every day, making
> the newsgroup inoperable. I have many objections to this argument, as
> follows:
> 
> If paedophiles and sado-masochists can have free access to their
> special interest groups why can I not have the same equality?
> 
> If I was a post-graduate student or a final year student working on
> leading edge Ada applications nobody would object to my postings
> because they would be interesting. Is the objection therefore really
> about wanting to avoid "casual" questions? If so the message was
> clearly marked simple student problem so it could be avoided by those
> not interested.
> 
> Would students post in many thousands of messages a day? I doubt the
> Ada student population is big enough! It seems that not many colleges
> use Ada as a teaching language. At TVU we only study it in the first
> year, so I would guess that only a small percentage of computer
> students have an interest in Ada. Until I mentioned the group to my
> class-mates none of them knew of it�s existence, and neither did the
> tutor. If that is the case in other colleges then the number of
> potential posters dwindles drastically. Not all Ada students go on to
> become Ada professionals but I would imagine that Ada professionals
> have over the years accumulated in numbers to the point where the
> population of Ada professionals probably far outweighs the population
> of Ada students. Therefore if the quantity of messages posted to the
> newsgroup is reflective of the entire population of Ada professionals,
> it would need a vast international army of voracious Ada students to
> post many thousands of messages a day. Where are they?
> 
> I see a lot on the Ada web sites concerning the demise of Ada and
> attempts to promote the greater use of Ada. If the Ada community is
> serious about this then they are shooting themselves in the foot by
> banning students from the news group. I study part time attending
> college one day a week. A lot is crammed into the day and the
> opportunities for access to specific tutors is extremely limited. As
> we travel from distant places none of my class mates are on hand to
> discuss problems outside of college. If I find my current text books
> inadequate, the supply of college books is so short that I must
> reserve a book two weeks in advance! The local library also requires
> me to order books because they consider Ada too obscure to warrant
> stocking text books. New text books are prohibitively expensive.
> Having access to the newsgroup for the OCASSIONAL problem would be
> extremely helpful.
> 
> Am I right in my understanding that most of the academic newsgroups
> are on servers sponsored by universities? It seems a bitter irony
> then, that those organisations tasked with creating the new
> professionals should wish to deny them access to a very valuable
> resource. Does familiarity breed contempt?
> 
> If all that I have said is wrong, and that students really would be a
> nuisance, then why can the problem not be solved by creating an Ada
> student�s newsgroup. If there are resources to create newsgroups about
> sadism and paedophilia then I am very angry that students cannot have
> an equal share of the webs resources.
> 
> The spirit of the web is one of equality and freedom, unless it seems,
> you are a student!
> 
> Mark.

Students most certainly should be welcome on cla.  No one controls
access
here.  However, a lot of users of this newsgroup object to students
who just want someone to do their homework assignment for them. We all
know that no one will learn anything that way.  If a person doesn't want
to
take the time to study and really learn something from the class he is 
taking (for whatever reason), then he should just drop it. But asking
for
help in understanding is fine and should be encouraged.  It's all a
matter of what you ask and how!  I think your approach of identifing
that your request was a student question in the header was a good one -
if people don't want to help, then they can skip it.  We get far more
worthless messages on cla all the time than a legitimate student
question!

I do disagree about there not many Ada students however.  I think there
are a lot more than you realize and rightfully so - Ada is becomming
more and more popular and there are a lot of Ada jobs paying good
salaries
out there.

Good luck with your studies.

Jerry


-- 
=====================================================================
== Jerry Petrey                                                    ==
== Consultant Software Engineer - Member Team Ada and Team Forth   ==
==            Rockwell Collins Commercial Avionics Group           ==
==            Melbourne, FL   email: gdp@mlb.cca.rockwell.com      ==
=====================================================================