> I wonder if the focus of spambayes ought not to be a classifier that
> leaves the fetching and feeding of messages to auxillary code? That
> way, it could be dropped into whatever harness that suited the
> user's situation.
I see no reason to restrict the project to developing the classifier
and leave the deployment to others.  Attempts at deployment in the
real world will surely provide additional feedback for the classifier.
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

Greg> In case it wasn't obvious, I'm a strong proponent of filtering
Greg> junk mail as early as possible, ie. right after the SMTP DATA
Greg> command has been completed.  Filtering spam at the MUA just seems
Greg> stupid to me -- by the time it gets to me MUA, the spammer has
Greg> already stolen my bandwidth.
The two problems I see with filtering that early are:
1. Everyone receiving email via that server will contribute ham to the
stew, making the Bayesian classification less effective.
2. Given that there will be some false positives, you absolutely have to
put the mail somewhere.  You can't simply delete it.  (I also don't
like the TMDA-ish business of replying with a msg that says, "here's
what you do to really get your message to me."  That puts an extra
burden on my correspondents.)  As an individual, I would prefer you
put spammish messages somewhere where I can review them, not an
anonymous sysadmin who I might not trust with my personal email
(nothing against you Greg ;-).
I personally prefer to manage this stuff at the user agent level.  Bandwidth
is a heck of a lot cheaper than my time.
Skip

[Guido]
> ...
> - A program that acts both as a pop client and a pop server.  You
>   configure it by telling it about your real pop servers.  You then
>   point your mail reader to the pop server at localhost.  When it
>   receives a connection, it connects to the remote pop servers, reads
>   your mail, and gives you only the non-spam.
FYI, I'll never trust such a scheme:  I have no tolerance for false
positives, and indeed do nothing to try to block spam on any of my email
accounts now for that reason.  Deliver all suspected spam to a Spam folder
instead and I'd love it.