Re: Problems with Bayesian filtering

On Feb 25 2004, Craig Hughes wrote:
> Why not?  If the MUA can do it, why shouldn't a filter be able to?

Hmm. I seem to have struck a nerve with my comment ;-)

There's nothing wrong with a filter emulating the MUA to any extent
desired. It likely would slow down processing dramatically, but if
the administrator of the filter finds this acceptable, why not.

It's not clear to me that this direction has a commensurate gain
in accuracy for the end user. People use different MUAs which behave
differently on the same MIME message. At best, you can emulate the
behaviour of the most popular mail clients, Outlook and Outlook Express. 

For filters close to the gateway level, this sort of thing would not be very
efficient or acceptable, I expect. For one thing, it's censorship
based on particular criteria which only apply to a majority of users,
not all users. 

-- 
Laird Breyer.