>>> On 12/18/2007 at 9:00 AM, Matt Kettler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Clay Davis wrote: > I've see several people write this. Can someone point me to some debate > I can review? It seems to me that if you set the autolearn threshold > fairly high and keep any eye on your bayes scoring, it would be a good > thing. > IMHO, autolearning is a good thing. However, exclusively autolearning without ever providing any manual training is a situation that can to lead to a mislearning disaster. The autolearner is most vulnerable when it has to make judgments and there's no existing training to compare against.
It's probably bad experience with that effect which has caused such gross over-reactions. You're exactly right, and in numerous posts on that forum, I've stated exactly that. On at least three different occasions, I have had to scrap my bayes database, and resend all e-mail received within a given period because my bayes database became corrupted, either one way or the other. In the years since that has happened, I have manually fed bayes, and between the rules I have added, and some additional plugins, not only have I never had that issue again, my spam catching is at an all time high. All by taking a few minutes every week to feed the spam in that's making past the filters. What may be a gross over-reaction to you seems perfectly sensible to me. I'm sure there are people who have great success with it, but for me, it was NOTHING but trouble. Mine is not the only story that I have read that has had exactly the same results.
