junk mail classification turned on in trunk builds

[Dan Mosedale]

At the end of last week, I checked in code to turn on basic junk mail
classification features in the trunk build. There's still lots of work
left to do, but it's in a state where folks should feel free to start
playing with it, and filing bugs in bugzilla. See
<http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/spam.html> for a short introduction to
how it works, as well as credits (getting this up and running has been
very much a group effort).

Dan

[Phil Sweeney]

Dan Mosedale wrote:
> playing with it, and filing bugs in bugzilla. See
> <http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/spam.html> for a short introduction to
> how it works, as well as credits (getting this up and running has been
> very much a group effort).

Can I delete (not move to trash) spam after I classify it, or must I
keep it there for it to be 'used' in future spam detection?

Phil

[Ben Ruppel]

Yes, I too find this confusing. If I mark email in my inbox as spam,
then delete the spam and check my trash folder, it is no longer marked
as spam. It boils down to at what point the email becomes a part of the
filter's db. Does it need to be currently marked as spam, wherever it
is, or is it entered into the db upon being marked as spam?

[Parish]

On 14/11/2002 22:18 Ben Ruppel stood on a soap-box and preached to the
unwashed masses:

> Yes, I too find this confusing. If I mark email in my inbox as spam,
> then delete the spam and check my trash folder, it is no longer marked
> as spam. It boils down to at what point the email becomes a part of the
> filter's db. Does it need to be currently marked as spam, wherever it
> is, or is it entered into the db upon being marked as spam?
>

FWIW, here's what I have been doing and it seems to be paying off. Since
writing this (I posted it in another NG a few hours ago) it has now
automatically marked 2 new mails correctly as junk:

It's starting to work here, although it only appears to do so
automatically in Inbox; other folders that mail is routed to by filters
(e.g. Bugzilla mail) seems to need manual intervention.

What I did was to mark everything correctly (junk/not junk) in Inbox,
then moved ~100 spam mails back to my Inbox from Trash and labelled them
junk so I have ~150 junk and ~400 not junk. I then selected all
messages, and Tools->Run Junk Mail Controls on Selected Messages. This
took a while to run and the only indication it was still running seemed
to be that if I selected a single message it didn't display it and
deselect the rest.

Now, when new mail arrives in my Inbox, after a few seconds the junk
icon gets set automatically. Unfortunately, it obviously doesn't have
enough sample data and tends to label most spam as not junk but this is
to be expected because, according to Paul Grahams' article, the
algorithms are weighted to avoid, as far as possible, false positives.

As for my Bugzilla folder, it contains ~1200 Bugzilla mails. I marked
all as not junk, selected them all, ran Junk Mail Controls on them yet
now, when new mails arrive, it still doesn't change the junk icon (it
remains "indeterminate") but if I select all the new mails and run Junk
Mail Controls on them it correctly marks them as not junk.

I don't know if I am using it the correct way as there is no detailed
(step-by-step) instructions on how to use it, but it appears to be
working :-)

HTH

Regards,

Parish