Re: SA going downhill

[Brian Nelson <pyro@debian.org>]

Steve Lamb <grey@dmiyu.org> writes:

> S.D.A. wrote:
>> I agree. I switched from SA several months ago, and am quite happy with the
>> speed, accuracy of Spamprobe over Spam Assassin.
>
>     I think this thread has shown that many people have a gross misconception
> on how SpamAssassin works and how it is fundimentally different than the
> alternatives listed.  In every case the alternatives listed have been a pure
> Bayesian system.  SpamAssassin is *NOT* a Bayesian system.  It is a framework
> in which a Bayesian system is also included.
>
>     Do you trust the Bayesian scoring more than the rest of the framework?
> Want to increase its accuracy?  The *adjust the scoring*!  In the default
> setup SpamAssassin is quite liberal in what it lets through because no one
> test can set a piece of mail to spam.  This means it is highly resilient to
> false positives.  

The scoring in more recent versions of spamassassin is generated using a
genetic algorithm that finds the optimal success rate while keeping
false positives to a minimum.  It's not something I'd mess with lightly,
unless you really know what you're doing.

-- 
You win again, gravity!