[Mailman-Developers] Google Summer of Code - Spam Defense

[Terri Oda]

On 27-Mar-08, at 2:37 PM, Martin Schütte wrote:
> P.S.: I hope this mail did not become too negative. I am always in
> favour of better and more user friendly spam filters. But there are
> quite a lot of spam-related patches already and any new approach  
> should
> be clearly better than the already existing hooks and functions.
> Otherwise it is just a waste of time which should be used for other
> problems (MM3 comes to mind).

Choosing the best of from existing spam-related packages and  
integrating them into the main development tree actually sounds about  
perfect for a Google summer of code project, IMO.  As does taking all  
the existing methods for handling things (as you described) and  
putting a good interface on them that makes it easier for people to  
use and realise that these things can be done.

It's easy for *us* to say "well, of course, you can already do that!"  
but many list admins and even site admins are not aware that these  
things can be done, and perhaps wouldn't even think to do them.  If  
there was a big "spam management" section in the admin interface,  
it'd make a lot of people happy.  Even just a simple "discard as  
spam" option which (a) discarded the message (b) saved it somewhere,  
ran a trainer on it, then deleted it (or not, but these things pile  
up) would be a useful change to many people.

I don't think it's a waste of time at all to make it easier for  
people to use existing hooks and functions.  And I think a lot of the  
reason we haven't integrated the existing spam-related patches is  
just that no one's had the time to look through them all and figure  
out which ones are the best and/or what elements we want from each of  
them.  Again, I think doing so would be quite the worthwhile endeavour.

Not all development has to be innovative research!  :)

  Terri