[spambayes-dev] A spectacular false positive

[Rob Hooft]

Tim Peters wrote:
> [Rob Hooft]
> 
>>>>I am now training on all mistakes and unsures, plus all ham scoring
>>>>more than 0.02 and all spam scoring less than 0.99.
> 
> 
> [Tim]
> 
>>>Then why not reset your ham and spam cutoffs to 0.02 and 0.99, to
>>>match? Then you can describe the same thing as just "mistakes and
>>>unsures" (which is what I mean by "mistake-based training").
> 
> 
> [Rob]
> 
>>Because I still "never look" at anything that scores over 0.90. They
>>are all spam.
> 
> 
> I don't understand.  Suppose a message scores 0.93.  0.93 > 0.90, so by what
> you just said you never look at it.  But 0.93 < 0.99, so by what you first
> said you *do* train on it.  Is it possible to simulataneously both train on
> a thing and never look at it?  I guess I don't know what "never look" means.
> You mean you don't use your eyeballs to physically look at the 0.93 message,
> but let spambayes auto-train on its own "it's spam" decision then?  That
> would be consistent with all that you said, so I'm assuming now that's the
> intended meaning.

Exactly. I am assuming that the 0.93 message has some "old-fashioned" 
spammy characteristics, but the spammer is looking at new techniques to 
disguise his messages in the future. He is just not radical enough to 
get into my unsure box. My automatic training on these messages now 
makes sure that this new trick will be useless in the future.

Rob
-- 
Rob W.W. Hooft  ||  rob at hooft.net  ||  http://www.hooft.net/people/rob/