mail score

[Jagadeesh]

Hi Gurus

a lame question.
Why we score an email? what is importance of this feature?

Thanks

[James Wilkinson]

Jagadeesh wrote:
> a lame question.
> Why we score an email? what is importance of this feature?

If you’re following a busy mailing list, it can help draw your attention
to the “more important” emails first. It can also help hide a
sufficiently boring combination of subject and poster.

It took me a while to work out how I wanted to score: these days I do
something like this:

* if there are people on a list (e.g. distro maintainers, project
leaders) whose opinion I respect, their email addresses get scored
up;

* anyone in my aliases file gets scored up. There are almost certainly
better ways to do it than this:
score "~f '(`awk -F’[<>]' '{ printf ("|%s", $2) }' ~/.mutt/aliases | cut -c2- | tr '[A-Z]' '[a-z]'`)'" +3

* if there are subjects on a mailing list I’m more (or less) interested
in, then I score them up or down appropriately;

* emails may get a few mutt points taken off depending on their
SpamAssassin score;

* known twits and trolls may have a certain number of points taken off
depending on their email address. (I also colour most of their email
green: it seems appropriate);

* I run killfiles based on a bit of scripting. Periodically I rotate
the killfiles. New entries get a fixed score of 0
(set score_threshold_read=1 keeps them invisible). Older entries have
progressively fewer points taken off their score, in case they start
making sense (and to keep the killfile short). Persistent offenders
get permanently plonked.

* I score down a few emails based on technical attributes (e.g.
html-only to a technical list. I ought to see if I can score based on
SpamAssassin rules (e.g. any e-mail with “u” as a single word loses
points…);

I probably ought, these days, to score up responses to my posts.

Normally I keep scores between 0 and 9.

You can also change some of the colours depending on the score, for
example:

message-hook ‘~n 8-’ “color header red default ‘^From|Subject:’”
message-hook ‘~n 8-’ “color signature red default”
message-hook ‘~n 8-’ “color status red default”
color index red default “~n 8-” # show important e-mails

I find a 256-colour terminal helps a lot for this.

Hope this helps,

James.

--
E-mail: james@ | ... boxing the books up was a mistake: they are welded to
aprilcottage.co.uk | the floor through the power of gravity.
| -- Telsa Gwynne’s diary.

[Jagadeesh]

Hello James Wilkinson,

Thank you so much for this crystal clear explanation with example.
After reading this reply I understood use of scoring email and will
start using it right away.

Thanks