Spamassassin and Spambayes

[Claude Jones]

On Monday June 26 2006 21:30, jdow wrote:
> Puny results, kid. {^_-} With SpamAssassin, rules, and a carefully hand
> fed Bayes I'm not kidding when I say I get about one spam in 1000 that
> creeps through. (And for the most part those train at near Bayes 0.50.)
>
> >> Am I missing something here? Is there a better way to train spamassassi
> >
> > Some people find it helpful to change the BAYES_99 test to me equal to
> > the spam cutoff or slightly below it. If the spam cutoff value is 5.0,
> > set BAYES_99 test value is set at 5.0 or 4.9.
>
> NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooo!
>
> If you are going to automatically train Bayes widen the automatic
> thresholds from the stock settings, at least at first. Once you have
> the weight of a working Bayes behind you the stock settings might
> work OK. I studied how the automatic classification system was
> supposed to work, thought about it a little while, and decided I
> am a big girl and can spoon feed SpamAssassin. Over the years I've
> been running Bayes (I forget when it appeared. I first hit SA at
> 2.43 I think it was - or maybe even 2.2 something.) I've trained on
> less than 2000 hams and 2000 spams. Bayes 99 alone catches 85% of the
> spam and hits almost no spam. Bayes 80 and 95 account for another
> almost 6%. The rest comes from the various rule sets I have running.
> I suppose I should feed the Bayes a little more. I've seen it doing
> better. But at the scoring I have (Bayes 99 is 5.001) I see such good
> results I am in the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mode. {^_-}

I was hoping you'd chime in, Joan. I looked at the article Aaron linked to, 
but anybody who claims to have tested five programs in depth for a column, 
and presents results like that is just not convincing to me. You have 
obviously figured out spamassassin - every time I've tried, I've found the 
documentation cryptic and tedious - maybe there's better out there, and I 
need to work on it some more, but, in the spirit of your last quoted sentence 
just above, after getting Spambayes working yesterday afternoon, and training 
on a couple of hundred messages, I came home this evening and found only two 
spam mails in my inbox - there were 313 classified spam mails in the trash, 
and after going through those, there was only one false positive, and that 
was from a commercial advertising list I'm subscribed to - I guess my 
solution ain't broke either... 
-- 
Claude Jones
Brunswick, MD, USA