[Spambayes] Whitelisting for spam reports

[Richie Hindle]

Manuel,

> Maybe it's my bad english, but i don't understand this.

Let me try to explain by example.  At the moment you use the SpamBayes
POP3 proxy to classify your email, and you presumably have a rule set up
in your email client to filter spam into a separate folder.  For example,
my rule looks like this:

  Where the "X-Spambayes-Classification" header contains "spam",
  file in folder: "Suspected spam"

That rule puts suspected spam into its own folder.  (Maybe you're using
the Subject: or To: header rather than the "X-Spambayes-Classification"
header, but hopefully this is familiar.)

What we're suggesting for whitelisting is that you add an additional rule
in your email client that looks something like this:

  Where the "From" header contains "spamcop",
  file in folder: "Inbox"

You give that rule a higher priority than your SpamBayes rule, and the
spamcop mail ends up in the "Inbox" folder rather than the "Suspected
spam" folder.

This *is* whitelisting.  All email clients already support it.  When, as
you say:

> The summary of that FAQ answer is simply "No, we don't want a whitelist
> and we are not going to code one."

you are exactly right, but there is a good reason - you already *have*
whitelisting, in the form of the filtering system that you are already
using to file away the email that SpamBayes has classified as spam.

You're right that you can't meaningfully train on your spamcop replies
because they are part spam and part ham, but by overriding your SpamBayes
rule with a whitelist rule, it no longer matters what classification
SpamBayes gives them.

Does that make sense?

-- 
Richie Hindle
richie at entrian.com