no filtering without ham

[Sven Burmeister]

Hi David!

Am Saturday 17 January 2009 15:26:30 schrieben Sie:
> > Before I talk to the kmail devs, are you aware of this issue and what
> > "solution" would you prefer? Maybe you have an even better approach,
> > so feel free to comment and add.

> "No filtering without ham" is exactly right!  A bayesian filter's job
> is distinguishing "good" from "bad" and it does this by comparing a new
> message to what it has been told "good" and "bad" mean.  Without
> knowledge of _both_ good and bad, it cannot do its job.

Sure, but the question is, how does the user know that he has to mark as ham 
and what is the easiest way to make the user feed bogofilter with ham. If my 
experience is right for more than a minority, users only mark as ham, if a 
message is marked as spam. Hence they only do mark as ham, as soon as 
bogofilter kicks in and kmail moves messages to the trash, that should not be 
moved there.

There is no "unsure" state in kmail yet, i.e. those get handled as ham and not 
moved anywhere. The more I think about it, a "unsure" folder would make sense, 
because the wizard points to the trash for spam emails by default, which could 
be seen as too dangerous.

I'll keep this in mind and report back to the kmail devs after this 
discussion. I think it's interesting to know what other mail clients do.

Thanks for your comment!

Sven