[Q] why using spam.el ?

[Q] why using spam.el ?

[Didier Verna]

        Hi folks !

Out of curiosity, I'm wondering why some people felt the need for such a thing
as spam.el.

In my own experience, I use spamassassin via procmail (with a very simple spam
detection scheme in gnus making the default (last) folder of
nnmail-split-methods to a group named "spam"). After bayesian training over
6000 messages (3000 spam, 3000 non spam), my spamassassin undetected spam rate
fell from 200 per day to 1 or 2 per day.

Currently, the only thing I use in spam.el is the M-d key sequence, which is a
bit overkill ;-)


-- 
Didier Verna, didier@lrde.epita.fr, http://www.lrde.epita.fr/~didier

EPITA / LRDE, 14-16 rue Voltaire   Tel.+33 (1) 44 08 01 85
94276 Le Kremlin-Bicêtre, France   Fax.+33 (1) 53 14 59 22   didier@xemacs.org

Re: [Q] why using spam.el ?

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Wed, 21 Apr 2004, didier@lrde.epita.fr wrote:

> In my own experience, I use spamassassin via procmail (with a very
> simple spam detection scheme in gnus making the default (last)
> folder of nnmail-split-methods to a group named "spam"). After
> bayesian training over 6000 messages (3000 spam, 3000 non spam), my
> spamassassin undetected spam rate fell from 200 per day to 1 or 2
> per day.

If that's OK with you, then that's great.  spam.el supports the setup
you describe, by the way.

Where people find spam.el most useful is not in detecting spam, but
in catching and training on misclassified spam and ham.  I'll bet
that for you, it's not a simple process to do this.  At the very
least you can have misclassified spam and ham moved automatically
when you exit the summary buffer.

Also, spam.el supports many backends, and catches spam in newsgroups.

> Currently, the only thing I use in spam.el is the M-d key sequence,
> which is a bit overkill ;-)

OK, but why do you use it?  The spam-mark is not persistent, so it's
only good until you exit the group.  I'll bet you have something else
happen after you set spam-marks (or you'd like to have something else
happen).

Anyhow, I said the other day that spam.el is a *reactive* package, it
responds to what you need.  You don't say "now, process all spam."
Instead you exit the group summary buffer and things happen
automatically.  I think that works better, and it's less intrusive.

I hope that answers some of your questions.

Ted

Re: [Q] why using spam.el ?

[Jonas Steverud]

Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:

> On Wed, 21 Apr 2004, didier@lrde.epita.fr wrote:
>
>> In my own experience, I use spamassassin via procmail
[...]
> Where people find spam.el most useful is not in detecting spam, but
> in catching and training on misclassified spam and ham.

Let's not forget one of the more important ones: For us that cannot
use preprocessed mail, e.g. by Spamassasin (which is easy to use if
you can filter through procmail and then let Gnus fetch from a file),
because Gnus fetches the email from a POP server and then splits it.
I read the docs for using SA using :prescript/:postscript (or whatever
the parameters where) and I can't say it was an elegant solution.

Not all ISPs supplies spam filters for their customers...

(: spam-split) and spam.el is then very handy indeed! It also gives me
a easy mean of using several spamfilters and easily use BBDB as a
whitelist. Very nice!

-- 
(        http://hem.bredband.net/steverud/        !     Wei Wu Wei     )
(        Meaning of U2 Lyrics, Roleplaying        !  To Do Without Do  )

Re: [Q] why using spam.el ?

[Didier Verna]

Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> wrote:

> Where people find spam.el most useful is not in detecting spam, but
> in catching and training on misclassified spam and ham.  I'll bet
> that for you, it's not a simple process to do this.

        It is. All my mail is sorted in different groups, and a spam group. 
When I read my mail, I M-d all spam (they're moved to the spam group). I have
then a crontab that, each night, sa-learn spam from the nnml spam directory,
and ham, from the others.

> At the very least you can have misclassified spam and ham moved
> automatically when you exit the summary buffer.

        I use this indeed.


> Also, spam.el supports many backends, and catches spam in newsgroups.

        In newsgroups, I didn't know.

-- 
Didier Verna, didier@lrde.epita.fr, http://www.lrde.epita.fr/~didier

EPITA / LRDE, 14-16 rue Voltaire   Tel.+33 (1) 44 08 01 85
94276 Le Kremlin-Bicêtre, France   Fax.+33 (1) 53 14 59 22   didier@xemacs.org

Exaggerated use of Face and X-Face (was: [Q] why using spam.el ?)

[Reiner Steib]

On Thu, Apr 22 2004, Didier Verna wrote:

[ 31 header lines with (X-)Face ]
> Face: iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAADAAAA[...]
>  [...]
> X-Face: "6PfX}r2)7p>beFd#OQkx'&3k#cg[...]
>  [...]
> Face: iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAADAAAA[...]
>  [...]
> X-Face: "8GeBF"qLu@sS,e"sSu&.59'R1a`[...]
>  [...]

Don't you think that using four (X-)Face headers is a bit too much?
Personally, I don't care too much about it, but some people already
complain about Gnus users with a single Face (or even X-Face) header.

> X-Url: http://www.lrde.epita.fr/~didier
> X-Web: http://www.lrde.epita.fr/~didier
> X-Home-Page: http://www.lrde.epita.fr/~didier

Also quite redundant, BTW.

Bye, Reiner.
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo--- PGP key available via WWW   http://rsteib.home.pages.de/

Re: Exaggerated use of Face and X-Face

[Wes Hardaker]

>>>>> On Thu, 22 Apr 2004 13:30:33 +0200, Reiner Steib <4.uce.03.r.s@nurfuerspam.de> said:

Reiner> Don't you think that using four (X-)Face headers is a bit too much?
Reiner> Personally, I don't care too much about it, but some people already
Reiner> complain about Gnus users with a single Face (or even X-Face) header.

Sigh.  Mail readers really should ignore unknown headers by default.
However, I've had to turn off my Face header for everything but this
mailing list because people asked me to stop putting it in there
(including my boss and my parents).


-- 
"In the bathtub of history the truth is harder to hold than the soap,
 and much more difficult to find."  -- Terry Pratchett

Re: Exaggerated use of Face and X-Face

[Reiner Steib]

On Thu, Apr 22 2004, Wes Hardaker wrote:

>>>>>> On Thu, 22 Apr 2004, Reiner Steib <4.uce.03.r.s@nurfuerspam.de> said:
>
> Reiner> Don't you think that using four (X-)Face headers is a bit too much?
> Reiner> Personally, I don't care too much about it, but some people already
> Reiner> complain about Gnus users with a single Face (or even X-Face) header.
>
> Sigh.  Mail readers really should ignore unknown headers by default.

At least for news (I'm not sure about mail):

,----[ rfc1036.txt ]
|     Certain headers are required, and certain other headers are
|     optional.  Any unrecognized headers are allowed, and will be passed
|     through unchanged.  [...]
`----

> However, I've had to turn off my Face header for everything but this
> mailing list because people asked me to stop putting it in there
> (including my boss and my parents).

In which way did it annoy them?

The usual arguments in Usenet [1] are bandwidth and that people claim
that "Face:" should begin with "X-" (experimental header).  Yes, I
know Lars position about this:

,----[ <news:m3of6lmq9a.fsf@quimbies.gnus.org> ]
| > I thought it was against some RFC (or at least against some
| > convention), to have non-standard headers without the "X-" prefix.
| 
| Yes, that's true, but I intend Face to become a standard header.  :-)
`----

Maybe Lars refers to the last item here:

,----[ draft-ietf-usefor-article-11.txt ]
| 4.2.1.  Naming of Headers
| 
|    [...]
|    Whilst relaying agents MUST accept, and pass on unaltered, any non-
|    variant header whose header-name is syntactically correct, and
|    reading agents MUST enable them to be displayed, at least optionally,
|    posting and injecting agents SHOULD NOT generate headers other than
|      o headers established by this standard or any extension to it;
|      o those recognized by other IETF-established standards, notably the
|        Email standard [RFC 2822] and its extensions, excluding any
|        explicitly deprecated for Netnews (e.g. see section 9.2.1 for the
|        deprecated Disposition-Notification-To-header); or,
|        alternatively, those listed in some future IANA registry of
|        recognized headers;
|      o experimental headers beginning with "X-" (as defined in 4.2.5.1);
|      o on a provisional basis only, headers related to new protocols
|        under development which are the subject of (or intended to be the
|        subject of) some IETF-approved RFC (whether Informational,
|        Experimental or Standards-Track).
`----

(I'm not sure that these references are the most recent standards.)

Concerning "bandwidth": Someone in gnu.emacs.gnus wrote that a French
ISP planned to ban "Face" headers.  See the Thread before
<news:v9d68jxsfp.fsf@marauder.physik.uni-ulm.de>.

Bye, Reiner.

[1] See e.g. the thread around
    <news:v9lloj1g8k.fsf@marauder.physik.uni-ulm.de> in
    de.comm.software.newsreader (in German).
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo--- PGP key available via WWW   http://rsteib.home.pages.de/

Re: Exaggerated use of Face and X-Face

[Wes Hardaker]

>>>>> On Thu, 22 Apr 2004 19:50:02 +0200, Reiner Steib <4.uce.03.r.s@nurfuerspam.de> said:

>> Sigh.  Mail readers really should ignore unknown headers by default.

Reiner> At least for news (I'm not sure about mail):

Well, I use gnus more for mail than news...

-- 
"In the bathtub of history the truth is harder to hold than the soap,
 and much more difficult to find."  -- Terry Pratchett

Re: Exaggerated use of Face and X-Face

[Steve Youngs]

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* Wes Hardaker <wes@hardakers.net> writes:

  > However, I've had to turn off my Face header for everything but
  > this mailing list because people asked me to stop putting it in
  > there (including my boss and my parents).

The answer is clear to me... install (X)Emacs and Gnus on their
computers.

-- 
|---<Steve Youngs>---------------<GnuPG KeyID: A94B3003>---|
|              Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.               |
|      The proof of the pudding, is under the crust.       |
|----------------------------------<steve@youngs.au.com>---|

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