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.