[Spambayes] Two Stage Plan

Gary Robinson grobinson at transpose.com
Wed Dec 18 07:06:08 EST 2002


> Hrm, this mailing list seems to be filled with a lot of irrational
> cranks, myself included. .... I guess
> we're just not into groupthink here.

The message i was responding to was completely flippant in tone so i
unfortunately responded in kind. sorry. I shouldn't have. My fault.

I'm actually not trying to push the idea I presented. First of all I don't
know if the reasoning is right or wrong until it's discussed. Secondly, even
if the reasoning is right, it won't work if people don't LIKE it. So all I'm
interested in doing at this point is find out what people think.

So far, it looks like some people like it and some don't. But it seems that
maybe enough like it to get it off the ground if it actually makes sense!

> I thought that one of the main features
> of the spambayes approach is that we actually follow the data,
> instead of trying to coerce the data (or the mail-sending population)
> into supporting some particular classification scheme.

My personal feelings on this point are

a) Yes, and the adaptive statistical approach is working great for me
personally compared to not having a spam filter and also compared to the
lame one in microsoft's Entourage.

b) It isn't really as perfect as I would like, because FP's do still occur,
so I still do have to check the subject and/or sender of every rejected
email, which still costs me valuable time every day.

c) Since there is nothing to give spammers a disincentive for sending me
more spam, I have no reason to assume that I won't get 10 times as much a
year from now as I do now (I do get 10 times as much now as a year ago), and
then checking rejected email will take 10 times longer, whch would be
completely intolerable. And I see no reason why it shouldn't be 100 times
worse 2 years from now. But even if things just stay as they are, they are
much worse than I want.

d) I believe that there are other approaches that will make things much more
difficult for spammers (such as cost-based ones) which would in fact vastly
reduce the amount of spam and thus do a much more complete job of solving
the problem. The challenge is to get everybody aboard the same solution.

e) While there is a natural tendency toward individualism, there are
situations where everybody coming aboard facilitates something worth the
sacrifice in individualism. TCP/IP and HTML being good examples.


--Gary


-- 
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Gary Robinson
CEO
Transpose, LLC
grobinson@transpose.com
207-942-3463
http://www.transpose.com
http://radio.weblogs.com/0101454


> From: "T. Alexander Popiel" <popiel@wolfskeep.com>
> Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2002 22:29:45 -0800
> To: Gary Robinson <grobinson@transpose.com>
> Cc: SpamBayes <spambayes@python.org>, popiel@wolfskeep.com
> Subject: Re: [Spambayes] Two Stage Plan
> 
> In message:  <BA2537B7.1ADF5%grobinson@transpose.com>
>            Gary Robinson <grobinson@transpose.com> writes:
> 
>> Well, the whole key to the idea is that people would get behind it. Some
>> irrational cranks are always expected, of course, no matter how worthy an
>> idea is. The question is whether a LOT of people can get behind it.
> 
> Hrm, this mailing list seems to be filled with a lot of irrational
> cranks, myself included.  I thought that one of the main features
> of the spambayes approach is that we actually follow the data,
> instead of trying to coerce the data (or the mail-sending population)
> into supporting some particular classification scheme.  I guess
> we're just not into groupthink here.
> 
> - Alex
> 




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