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From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!??????
Date: 1997/04/21
Message-ID: <dewar.861678652@merv>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 236541772
References: <335bdd1b.5485893@news>
Organization: New York University
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1997-04-21T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


Mark is obviously new to newsgroups, since he has so many misconceptions.
Sometimes it seems like more and more such people are around.

Anyway, the misconceptions should be set right for the benefit of
other neophyte readers of CLA :-)

<<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          
>>

There are hundreds of schools teaching Ada (go check www.adahome.com for
info), to thousands of students. if all of them posted questions about
all their assignments, simple arithmetic shows that 99% of the messages
on CLA would be from students. An analogy would be in a big lecture if
students never read anything, and each asked dozens of qustions like
"I couldn't be bothered to read about arrays, how do they work?" As
in a lecture, you need to put in some work of your own (e.g. visit
www.adahome.com and run one of the online tutorials created by hard
work of some individuals contributing their time).

<<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?

>>

No, your understanding is completely wrong, the newsgroups are not
"academic" nwsgroups and have nothing whatever to do with universities.
The newsgroup feeds are of course available to any user of the net, including
universities, but they have no special status.

<<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
studentM-^Rs 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.

>>

Spend less energy being angry, and more learning how things work. Anyone
can form an alt newsgroup (which is where the kind of newsgroups you are
talking about live). No one needs to have any authority of any kind to
do this. If you think such a newsgroup will be useful (and will attrct 
people who can help), learn how to send out the message that creates a new
alt group, and do it! Altenratively, organize a net vote to form a subgroup
of comp.lang.ada.

<<The spirit of the web is one of equality and freedom, unless it seems,
you are a student!
>>

This has nothing to do with the Web, we are talking newsgroups here. You 
need to learn much more about what is going on. Yes, the net is an
environment of equality and freedom, but with equality and freedom go
responsibility and good citizenship and the need to have educated
citizens -- just like any democracy, the smooth operation of society
depends on this!