Hi, [N.B.: I'm speaking generally to this thread, not specifically to Chris.]
On Wed, 8 Sep 2004, Chris Santerre wrote: > I was mistaken. MIT now teaches Trolling 101. [...] I'm not willing to personalize this issue. SpamAssassin *is* difficult to use and is probably unusable for most unskilled/neophyte computer users. As I said before, if someone wants a button to press in Outlook to make spam go away, they should use a different tool because SpamAssassin will just frustrate them. The question is if this is a usability problem. Maybe it is. Of course, we need to know about the user, the problem trying to be solved, and how the user tries to solve the problem with SA before we can even start to criticize usability. I find SpamAssassin perfectly usable, in that it mostly reliably tags my mail as spam or ham when I call it from procmail or via pop3proxy. Then again, I've been working with computers since 1982, I've worked with unix on and off since 1986, and I've been coding in perl since 1995. If I run into problems, I can RTFM, ask this mailing list, search Google, and if all else fails, RTFSC[1]. A counterexample - I find commercial jets perfectly usable in my role as a passenger. Commercial jets are useless to me as a driver; I have no idea what the baffling array of controls do, and I'd probably be tackled, stuffed in the trunk of a car, and 'disappeared' to a secret government prison if I so much as mentioned driving a commercial jet in front of the wrong people. This doesn't bother me[2]. If I wanted to fly a commercial jet, I'd do a little research to find out how one becomes a commercial jet pilot, what training and knowledge is required, etc. The upshot is that SpamAssassin is a complex piece of code that requires a certain level of knowledge and expertise to use effectively. If one does not have the required level of knowledge or expertise to use SA effectively, and one is unable or unwilling to raise one's level of knowledge or expertise to the requisite level, one's inability to use SA effectively is not due to a lack of usability of SA. In the same way, my inability to pilot a commercial jet does not indicate a usability problem with the jet. And please don't take this as a sign of technophile arrogance. I believe that the issue is less of usability and more of setting product selection criteria based on desired use, user skill, and cost (which includes cost of analysis and research, willingness to learn, etc., in addition to monetary cost.) YMMV, -- Bob [1] '" " " source code' [2] Well, the "... 'disappeared' to a secret government prison ..." part bothers me but there's not a hell of a lot I can do about that. Besides, it's off-topic.
