[clue-tech] Thunderbird junk training

[Greg Knaddison]

On 5/2/06, Angelo Bertolli <angelo at freeshell.org> wrote:
> Jeff Cann wrote:
>
> > Hi everyone,
> >
> > According to the firefox FAQ, this article describes how to setup NS
> > 7.1 / FireFox for Junk email filtering:
> >
> > http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Fighting_Junk_Mail_with_Netscape_7.1
> >
> > Two questions.
> >
> > 1.  I turned on the logging to see what the app marks as junk. I
> > noticed that when I manually mark it as junk, it is not in the log.
> > Is this what other people see?  It seems like it should log anything
> > related to clicking the 'junk' icon.

I'm not really sure - that's a pretty specific question...

>
> > 2.  Currently, I have not created junk folders.  I unchecked 'move
> > junk' option until it's better trained [this was the recommendation
> > from the article].  The question is what do I do with those mails
> > marked as junk?  It seems like if I delete them, this could affect
> > training.  I'm not sure though.
>
> I would actually suggest just creating the Junk folder and letting it
> collect there.  Just don't use the automatic delete option.

I'm with Angelo.  I use the junk folder.  At first I checked it every
few hours and resorted mails.  Then it got good enough that I would
check ever day or so, and now I check it maybe once a week.  It works
beautifully if you train it well.  I've read that it's better to
follow a system like

1. notice a new junk mail pattern (e.g. kkpt stock advice)
2. mark one of those messages as junk and just manually delete any
other that hit the inbox
3. repeat

That apparently helps the filter learn and recognize more kinds of
spam without over-training it on certain specific instances.  I'm too
lazy for that just mark them all as junk and it does well enough for
me.

Cheers,
Greg