Re: [9fans] tactic

[Jon Snader <jsnader@ix.netcom.com>]

On Thu, Apr 01, 2004 at 06:00:15PM +0100, Dave Lukes wrote:
> > They're working fine for me.  The filter adapted to the garbage
> > salad at the end pretty quickly, and now it routinely drops all
> > those messages in the spam trap.
> 
> Yes, but ...
> 1) your database(s) just keep growing
> 2) you're fuzzying the line a lot:
>    our well tuned spamassassin scores most stuff _very_ close
>    to the "non-spam" score: a difference of .1/5 (2%) in the score
>    means about another 20-30 spams getting through.
>    So, as you "pollute" your filter, you increase the likelihood
>    of false positives/negatives.
> 

I haven't used SpamAssassin, so I'll take your word for it.  My
use of a Bayesian filter is for my personal account, which is
relatively low volume (150-200 messages per day).  I doubt that
a Bayesian filter would work as well when it's filtering for
multiple people.

The point of my post, though, was only that Bayesian filters could
deal with the garbage salad.  They obviously aren't the perfect
solution, or even the best solution for all purposes.  They do,
however work well for me.  Maybe one or two spams slip by on a
given day, and I get virtually no false positives.  YMMV, of
course.

jcs