The problem with this analysis is that it assigns greater value to
contributions from subscribers than to contributions from
non-subscribers. But often the failure to accept clues from
"outsiders" causes working groups to do harm - and filtering messages
in the #2 category increases this tendency. The occasional rejection
of #2 messages can be very harmful.
On Dec 18, 2003, at 3:01 PM, Vernon Schryver wrote:
1. on-topic messages from subscribers
2. on-topic messages from non-subscribers
3. noise from subscribers
4. noise from non-subscribers
5. pure spam such as advertisements for loan sharks
In this list, only #1 is clearly "good." It is good to avoid rejecting
#2, but there is surely no harm in sometimes delaying #2. If the
senders of any rejected or "false positive" #2 received an informative
non-delivery report so that they could retransmit, what would be the
harm?
SpamAssassin is reported to be better than 60% accurate. #2 is surely
rare compared to #1. Thus, as long as SpamAssassin white-lists all
subscribers, there would be no harm in the occasional rejection of #2.