[Spambayes] counterweight: it really works!

[Matt Sergeant]

Tim@mail.powweb.com said the following on 04/11/02 16:39:
> The thing that SB has that SA doesn't is the ongoing ability to train a database according to the USER'S definition of spam.  SA has some configurability, but 
> who actually does that?  Who wants to download updates?  SB lets me say "This is spam.  Learn from this" or "This is ham..."  I'm not going back.  :)

FWIW SpamAssassin now has a statistical classifier (in 2.50, which isn't 
officially released yet, but then neither is spambayes [grin]) using the 
Robinson algorithm. I'm hoping to get the chi-squared algorithm in there 
too, but /I had some trouble with it producing wierd results for me (I 
tried to post something to this list about it but it vanished into the 
ether, so I'll try again shortly).

Ultimately I think what people will find is that statistical classifiers 
are a good part of an overall strategy, but not necessarily the end of 
the story in spam detection (which is a shame). SpamAssassin is a pretty 
mature product these days, with some really neat technology going on in 
there like the auto-whitelist, and it's really great that we can all 
learn from each other this way./

Matt.