bogus bogotuning

[Greg Louis]

On 20040127 (Tue) at 1504:51 -0800, Greg McCann wrote:
> On 1/27/2004 at 5:23 PM Greg Louis <glouis at dynamicro.on.ca> wrote:
> 
> ...
> >If that option is there, it will be used.  If it is used, laymen will
> >get useless suggestions from bogotune and will get lousy results with
> >bogofilter.  Should we clutter the code with bad options and then say,
> >"actually this is a bad thing, don't use it"?
> ...
> 
> I don't have an opinion on the merits of this particular option, but
> lots of software has "dangerous" options (either runtime, config, or
> compile-time) that should only be used by those who know what they
> are doing.  Sendmail's "DONT_BLAME_SENDMAIL" and netcat's
> "GAPING_SECURITY_HOLE" come to mind.  I think the option should be
> judged by its potential usefulness to a knowledgeable user rather
> than the fact that someone who doesn't know what they are doing might
> use it inappropriately.

I argue, precisely, that anyone who understands what bogotune does and
how it works would not use this option.  With that few messages, the
user is safer to stick with bogofilter's default parameter values (or
with values obtained elsewhere on a reasonably sized corpus).  Although
anyone can make the one-line change that David suggested, I think it
sends the wrong message altogether if we offer it officially.

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