UI for correcting mistakes

[Herman Oosthuysen]

Tight integration with a mail client is the only practical way.  I have 
been evaluating bogofilter on one of my mail servers and returning mail 
to the server using a bad/good pair of usernames, but this 
implementation will require too much user training/discipline to work well.

So, for the wife's office system, I am now deploying Mozilla.  I don't 
know how exactly Moz's Bayesian spam filters work, but they seem to work 
well enough, are easy to use and the users are totally amazed and happy 
with it.

If bogofilter could be integrated (with a patch?) into Mozilla, then I 
would be very happy to use it.

elijah wrote:
> A key difficulty, it seems to me, in deploying bogofilter for a wide
> user base is creating a really easy way for the average user to correct
> mistakes.
> 
> I have developed a method which I think works ok, but I am curious what
> other people are doing.
> 
> Some ideas:
> 
> 1) aliases
> 
> set up aliases which pipe the *bounced* mail to bogofilter with the
> appropriate switch to correct missed spam or ham.
> 
> advantages: works with any mail client which supports bouncing. agnostic
> when it comes to the rest of the mail system.
> 
> disadvantages: most clients don't support bouncing. could be open to abuse
> unless you monitor the corrections or limit who the bounces can come from.
> 
> 2) client hacks
> 
> this includes all the possible modifications to mail clients to add spam
> awareness. might include adding new key bindings, writing modules to add
> special buttons to a web mail client, or writing macros or plug-ins for
> mail clients like mozilla-mail, outlook, eudora.
> 
> advantages: easy for the user
> disadvantages: each client is totally different, so it is a big project to
> be able to support most clients. users with their own clients would have
> to download custom software.
> 
> 3) server folders
> 
> establish a rule like this:
> - if a user manually puts a message in their spam folder
>   (and it was not delivered there because it was tagged spam by
>   bogofilter) then import this as a 'missed spam' correction.
> - if a user manually puts a message previously identified as spam
>   in their regular trash, then input this as a 'false positive'
>   correction.
> 
> advantages: works with all IMAP based mail clients. easy to implement.
> 
> disadvantages: does not work with POP (requires server side folders).
> requires that users configure their IMAP clients to use server folders.
> implementation dependent on you mail storage setup.
> 
> 4) embedded links
> 
> the body of a suspected spam could be modified to provide a URL for
> correcting a 'false positive'.
> 
> it might work like this: bogofilter could add a header which was a hash of
> the message--something which has a good chance of uniquely identifying the
> message quickly. the correction URL is keyed on this hash and the user's
> address. the form of the URL is configurable in the bogofilter config
> file. when the user clicks the URL, a custom web script is activated which
> scans the user's mail for a messages with a header with the hash value.
> if it finds the message, the message is imported into bogofilter as a
> correction. if not, it reports to the user that the message could not be
> found. This could also work similarly with a mailto href.
> 
> I think the code for the web script would be very easy. I assume that the
> bogofilter side code would be too. I don't know about the trickiness of
> modifying the bodies of mime-multipart messages.
> 
> advantages: VERY easy for all users and all clients.
> disadvantages: requires custom programming depending on your particular
> mail storage. does not include a way to correct 'false negatives'.
> 
> 5) lobotomized aliases
> 
> since most clients don't support bouncing messages, you could set up an
> alias which accepted forwards. The first thing it did was strip away all
> the headers and try to remove the 'forward' stanza. Then it would pass it
> to bogofilter.
> 
> advantages: works with all clients.
> 
> disadvantages: you loose a lot of the most important information when you
> strip away the headers. same disadvantages as aliases.
> 
> ----
> 
> Anyway, those are some of my ideas. I have the 'server folders' method
> working pretty well with a simple little bash script using maildirs. I am
> really curious what other things people are doing. Are there creative
> things which I missed? It would be very cool to have a 'cookbook' section
> to the FAQ or website where it listed some of the different setups people
> have working.
> 
> -elijah
> 
> 
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-- 

Herman Oosthuysen
B.Eng.(E), Member of IEEE
Wireless Networks Inc.
http://www.WirelessNetworksInc.com
E-mail: Herman at WirelessNetworksInc.com
Phone: 1.403.569-5687, Fax: 1.403.235-3965