[Spambayes-checkins] website faq.txt,1.3,1.4

[Skip Montanaro]

Update of /cvsroot/spambayes/website
In directory sc8-pr-cvs1:/tmp/cvs-serv25778

Modified Files:
	faq.txt 
Log Message:
add a question and answer about things to check when the classifier isn't.



Index: faq.txt
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RCS file: /cvsroot/spambayes/website/faq.txt,v
retrieving revision 1.3
retrieving revision 1.4
diff -C2 -d -r1.3 -r1.4
*** faq.txt	5 Jun 2003 14:19:01 -0000	1.3
--- faq.txt	17 Jun 2003 21:37:40 -0000	1.4
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*** 480,483 ****
--- 480,509 ----
  
  
+ Spambayes doesn't seem to catch much spam.  What gives?
+ -------------------------------------------------------
+ 
+ Initially, Spambayes will not be able to distinguish spams from hams.  With
+ no training inputs, the classifier will simply mark everything unsure.  Once
+ you start training the classifier on a representative set of spams and hams
+ it should very quickly begin to improve, however.  If that's not the case,
+ perhaps you have something misconfigured.  Here are a couple things to
+ check:
+ 
+ 1. What do you have your ham and spam thresholds set to?  The defaults are
+    0.2 and 0.9, respectively, and should be reasonable starting points.
+    They should not be close together (say, 0.4 and 0.6).
+ 
+ 2. Have you trained on a reasonable number of hams and spams?  You should
+    train on 10 to 20 of each to start with just to get a decent base.  After
+    that, you should be able to train on just mistakes and messages
+    classified as unsure.
+ 
+ 3. Check to be sure you haven't made any classification mistakes (trained
+    spams as hams or vice versa).  If so, you could really confuse things and
+    should move incorrectly classified messages to their correct locations
+    and retrain (which may happen automatically, depending on how you're
+    using Spambayes).
+ 
+ 
  How do I start from scratch after messing up my training?
  ---------------------------------------------------------