Pratik Sarkar writes:
Is the anti-spam/abuse filter still being seriously considered as a gsoc project this year?
I would say so, yes. Personally, I am fundamentally opposed to it; I think it's wrong in principle (filtering of this kind should be done by the incoming MTA) and inappropriate for the 3.0 release. *But* there is clearly user demand for it, and among the actually signed-up mentors[1] there are at least two who have shown some support for it.
OTOH, you should be aware that while nobody has a veto except Barry (Terri has one ex oficio but I doubt she'd exercise it if Barry was in favor), it's likely that projects that all the mentors favor will be ranked higher, and looking at the quality of posts from students so far there is going to be competition for Mailman slots.
If you have a solid proposal for anti-spam already worked out (the idea the guy proposed with a Bayesian filter based on word triads comes close to what I'd call solid, see also Terri's post where she proposed a schedule for the kind of additional detail needed), then that's probably your best bet.
But if you're looking for a project and you think that anti-spam is cool but that's all the thinking you've done so far, I'd say it's very risky proposal. There are a lot of things we need in UI (both subscriber-oriented and admin-oriented) that are interesting and higher-priority.
Footnotes: [1] Terri (org admin), Barry (project lead), Wacky, Pingu, Florian, and me.