[Mailman-Developers] Google Summer of Code - Spam Defense

[Timo Wingender]

Martin Schütte schrieb:
>  Terri Oda schrieb:
> > Even if it's not Mailman's responsibility to do the scanning, it can 
> > be incredibly helpful to make the mailman interface aware of and able 
> > to interact with scanning technologies.
>
>  I would suggest to be more specific: which functions do we wish to have,
>  what is necessary to implement them, and is the effort worth it?
>
>  - run Spamassassin (or another classification) on all messages:
>  IMHO this is the MTA's job, so let's assume it already happens
>
>  - hold or discard Messages marked as spam:
>  Set up Spam-Filter rules with "X-Spam-Flag: YES", "X-Spam-Level:
>  \*\*\*\*\*\*\*", or whatever. It is not the most user friendly
>  interface, but certainly the most configurable and flexible one.
 >
>  - give feedback to train a classifier:
>  The admindb interface already has a checkbox to save spam.
>  IMHO it should be given a better label (cf.
> 
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1910552&group_id=103&atid=300103)
>  but it exists and the site administrator only has to train the saved
>  messages regularly. (On my site I deliver them into a shared IMAP
>  spam-folder for review and training.)
This is a begin. But train a statistical filter is more than feeding it 
with spam. Feeding it with ham messages just as important.
>
>  - reclassify mails in the hold-queue:
>  This sounds quite promising (I know some people do this successfully
>  with IMAP inboxes).
>  But as already mentioned this requires additional effort from the site
>  admins, which probably will not change a working Amavis setup for this.
What has this to do with the amavis setup? SpamAssassin should be 
installed on every site. And then it can be called to reclassify 
messages and to learn them as spam or ham.

Yes, most of this can be done with mailman in some way already. But 
therefor you have to know much about mailman and the mail system. This 
requires changes of the system and sometimes patching of mailman. I this 
it's an good idea to have this features in mailman, so everyone can 
simply use it. Even if they don't have access to the system.