[Spambayes] SpamBayes spam filter programme.... At this stage IT'SA CROCK !!!!!!

[Tony Meyer]

> Your information pages are exceptionally difficult
> to follow

Comments like this don't help.  What exactly is difficult to follow?  We
need specifics in order to make things better - ideally, both identification
of particular sections that are hard to understand, and (once you have
figured them out), suggested improvements to the wording.

> and the directories that you instruct people to go to
> are incorrect.

Again, this is not helpful.  Give specific examples of any mistakes and we
will happily correct them.

> I don't have the administrator tool available on this
> system to manually configure this programme. Or the Local  etc.

This makes no sense.  What "administrator tool" are you referring to?  What
do you mean by "the Local"?  You don't need anything to configure SpamBayes
other than SpamBayes itself.

> If I was to put the address into the proxy settings what [...] is the 
> address of the port is it 8880 or 110

I presume you are referring to the "SpamBayes Ports" option.  The help
string for that option says:

"""
Each POP3 server that is being monitored must be assigned to a 'port' in the
SpamBayes POP3 proxy. This port must be different for each monitored server,
and there must be a port for each monitored server. Again, you need to
configure your email client to use this port. If there are multiple servers,
you must specify the same number of ports as servers, separated by commas.
If you don't know what to use here, and you only have one server, try 110,
or if that doesn't work, try 8110.
"""

The last sentence indicates that you should try 110 (falling back to 8110).

If you are referring to setting up Outlook Express, you simply use whatever
port you used in the above section.  If this was 110, then OE will default
to this, so you don't need to change anything.

> You need to them into single operating systems or group them 
> such as Win/98/ME installations ...etc then group the different
> mail clients under those OS headers. Much simpler

If you would like to contribute such documentation, we will happily
integrate it.  Patches can be submitted via the sourceforge system:
<http://sf.net/projects/spambayes>.  For us, that is a *huge* amount of
work, involving platforms and mailers that we don't necessarily have access
to.

I personally feel that it would be overkill, anyway.  Configuring SpamBayes
involves almost nothing that is platform specific (the only
platform-specific things I can think of are finding the log files if
something goes wrong - and the automatic bug report creator will do that for
you, or locating your data directory if you need to for some reason - and
the configuration page tells you where that is).

Instructions for configuring various mailers with SpamBayes might be of more
use, but it's generally not a particularly hard thing to do, and we have
instructions for the most common mailers.

In the longer term, the 1.1a1 release will include a configuration wizard,
similar to the one the Outlook plug-in has, that sets both SpamBayes and
various common (Windows) mailers up.  This wasn't able to be completed in
time for the 1.0 release.

> I find it hard to conceive that APC magazine would recommend
> your Product. So it's FREE... well the programme should work
> I'm glad I didn't donate!

You'll have to take that up with the magazine in question.  We have nothing
to do with them (I've never even heard of it), so they presumably wrote an
independent review like they review any other product.  IAC, I'm sure that
the many other SpamBayes users would assert that it did, in fact, work.

FWIW, you are under no obligation at all to donate, whether or not you use
SpamBayes.  We provide the opportunity to donate because some people really
want to.  The funds don't even go to us (see
http://spambayes.org/donate.html), so they have no effect on the development
or support of SpamBayes itself.  We're very happy for you (or anyone else)
to use SpamBayes without any donation.

> I know enough to Build, Programme and successfully operate a
> standalone computer. Why are your setup instructions so hard to
> follow!

Well, they're easy enough for the majority of other users, so you're
probably just getting stuck on some simple step for which the documentation
isn't clear to you, or something.  IAC, that's where the mailing list can
help, although I would recommend posting more polite messages if you would
like prompt help in the future.

> Icons wont load
> programme wont run
> Programme refuses to learn
> Cant find databases and the list goes on........

When trying to get help, it really helps *us* if you ask a clear question.
You may wish to read this:

<http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html>

If by "icons wont load" you mean that images on the web interface aren't
appearing, I have no idea what would cause this - we would need to see your
log file.  "programme wont run" could be any number of things.  Again, the
log file would help.  "Programme refuses to learn" indicates that SpamBayes
*is* running, but could mean that training isn't working (again, log files),
or that training is working, but you're not getting the classification
results you expect (in that case, we need to see the clues for that message
- before training on it).  "Cant find databases" - do you mean that *you*
can't find the databases (the configuration page shows the path to them, but
you shouldn't need to know where they are anyway), or that SpamBayes can't
find them (it would just create new ones in that case).

> If  you wish to release this or a similar  product
> commercially you would have difficulty in sustaining sales.

It seems you don't understand the open source concept that underlies the
SpamBayes release:

This isn't, and will never be, commercial software.  No-one will ever have
to pay for this software.  It will always be free.  It is developed by a
group of volunteers in their free time, who make no money from this at all.
Improvements either come because a developer is willing to help out a user,
because a developer wants a feature him/herself, or - and this is key -
because a user submitted an improvement they created themselves.  More
information about open source software can be found at:

<http://www.opensource.org/>

Information about how you (or anyone else) can help with improving SpamBayes
is covered in FAQ 4.15:

<http://spambayes.org/faq.html#i-m-not-a-programmer-but-want-to-help-out-wha
t-can-i-do>

> My partner as a basic user has no hope of getting this
> application to work appropriately 

FWIW, my wife is fairly computer illiterate, and managed to setup sb-server
without any of my help, just reading the instructions.  In addition, if you
compare (eg) the 1.0a1 release and the 1.0 final release, I'm sure you'd
agree that things have vastly improved.

=Tony Meyer

---
Please always include the list (spambayes at python.org) in your replies
(reply-all), and please don't send me personal mail about SpamBayes. This
way, you get everyone's help, and avoid a lack of replies when I'm busy.