[Spambayes] Training/Scoring in SpamBayes

[Michael K. Schummers]

Clearly there is something in ongoing Training of SpamBayes that I do not
understand. I am running 0.81 Outlook plugin on Win XP Pro with Outlook
2000. A while back (weeks, not days), I retrained to get a more balanced
training of ham vs. spam. As time has progressed, I now have a five to one
ratio of ham vs. spam in the statistics reported by SpamBayes manager (3653
ham vs. 639 spam). My understanding from the forum comments is that messages
will NOT be trained in the "natural" assignment process of scoring and
moving to Unsure, Spam or leaving in the Inbox. New messages WILL be trained
if moved from Unsure to Inbox or Spam. They will also be trained if moved
from Inbox to Spam or Spam to Inbox (clearly this will also occur if "Delete
as Spam" or "Recover from Spam" buttons are used in the respective folders.
Is there some other training that will occur (without the manual steps of
invoking from SpamBayes Manager) automatically?? It doesn't appear to me
(but I have not kept detailed statistics) that I am manually classifying
significantly more "ham" messages than "spam" messages and this propensity
to swing the training ration strongly in the "ham" direction has me a bit
confused (the effective screening of "spam" tends to get worse gradually as
the ratio starts to get out of balance). Am I missing some element of the
process??
 
Michael K. Schummers
General Manager

 
 
 
 
 
(859) 455-7317
HYPERLINK "mailto:mikes at members-insurance.com"mikes at members-insurance.com

---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.538 / Virus Database: 333 - Release Date: 11/10/2003


-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/gif
Size: 6113 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mail.python.org/pipermail/spambayes/attachments/20031114/6dfb0d97/attachment-0001.gif
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 7559 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mail.python.org/pipermail/spambayes/attachments/20031114/6dfb0d97/attachment-0001.jpe