How do I filter out spam that turns up on mailing lists?

[Tom Anderson]

Nigel Henry wrote:
> Hi Tom. Ok I see where you're going. So would it be helpfull if I trained 
> bogofilter with a load of genuine Debian ham mails, so as to compare the ham 
> from spam?

No, you want to train with the errors only.  The point is that the 
Debian list headers are already hammy because you've received so many of 
them as hams.  That's presumably why bogofilter is having a hard time 
filtering out the spams on that list.  You have to counter this by 
training the spams so as to neutralize the Debian-list-specific tokens. 
  Once those tokens are seen as neither hammy nor spammy, then the 
content of the email will shine through and bogofilter will classify it 
correctly.

Tom