[Spambayes] Using spambayes

Tony Meyer tameyer at ihug.co.nz
Fri Nov 26 01:30:27 CET 2004


> Do I then have to delete all the messages which appear in
> the junkmail folder

It's up to you.  Once they are there, they're of no use to SpamBayes.  See
FAQ 3.17:

<http://spambayes.org/faq.html#is-it-ok-to-delete-the-messages-in-the-spam-f
older>

> and if I keep doing this, will the junk
> mail eventually be filtered and stop appearing ??

I'm not sure what you mean by this, so if my answer doesn't make sense,
please clarify and I'll try again :)

The way SpamBayes works is that it initially knows nothing about what you
think is good mail (ham) and what you think is bad mail (spam).  You teach
it by giving it examples of ham and spam, and it then classifies incoming
mail based on that knowledge.

The way that we recommend Outlook users train is to use the "Delete as spam"
and "Recover from spam" buttons (or just drag the messages to the ham/spam
folders) on all messages that end up in the unsure (Possible Junk) folder
and any messages that are incorrect (ham in the spam folder, spam not
moved).  It shouldn't take very much training before classification is very
good.

=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.
http://www.massey.ac.nz/~tameyer/writing/reply_all.html explains this.



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