Debian list spam reporting the Gnus way
#+TITLE: Debian spam reporting the Gnus way
#+AUTHOR: Manoj Srivastava
#+EMAIL: srivasta@debian.org
#+DATE:
#+LANGUAGE: en
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#+LINK_UP: http://www.golden-gryphon.com/blog/manoj/
#+LINK_HOME: http://www.golden-gryphon.com/
So, recently our email overlords graciously provided means for us
minions to help them in their toils and help clean up the spammish
clutter in the mailing lists by helping report the spam. And the
provided us with a dead simple means of reporting such spam to
them. Now, us folks who knoweth that there is but one editor, the true
editor, and its, err, proponent is RMS, use Gnus to follow the emacs
mailing lists, either directly, or through [[http://www.gmane.org][gmane]]. There are plenty of
examples out there showing how to automate reporting spam to /gmane/,
so I won't bore y'all with the details. Here I only show how one
serves our list overlords, and smite the spam at the same time.
Some background, from the Gnus info page. I'll try to keep it
brief. There is far more functionality present if you read the
documentation, but you can see that for yourself.
#+BEGIN_QUOTE
The Spam package provides Gnus with a centralized mechanism for
detecting and filtering spam. It filters new mail, and processes
messages according to whether they are spam or ham. There are two
"contact points" between the Spam package and the rest of Gnus:
checking new mail for spam, and leaving a group.
Checking new mail for spam is done in one of two ways: while
splitting incoming mail, or when you enter a group. Identifying spam
messages is only half of the Spam package's job. The second half
comes into play whenever you exit a group buffer. At this point,
the Spam package does several things: it can add the contents of the
ham or spam message to the dictionary of the filtering software, and
it can report mail to various places using different protocols.
#+END_QUOTE
All this is very plugin and modular. The advantage is, that you can
use various plugin front ends to identify spam and ham, or mark messages
as you go through a group, and when you exit the group, spam is
reported, ham and spam messages are copied to special destinations for
future training of your filter. Since you inspect the marks put into
the group buffer as you read the messages, there is a human involved
in the processing, but as much as possible can be automated away. /Do/
read the info page on the Spam package in Gnus, it is edifying.
Anyway, here is a snippet from my ~etc/emacs/news/gnusrc.el~ file,
which can help automate the tedium of reporting spam. This is perhaps
more like how Gnus does things than having to press a special key for
every spam, and which does nothing to help train your filter.
#+BEGIN_HTML
[[!syntax language="Common Lisp" linenumbers=1 bars=1 text="""
(add-to-list
'gnus-parameters
'("^nnml:\\(debian-.*\\)$"
(to-address . "\\1@lists.debian.org")
(to-list . "\\1@lists.debian.org")
(admin-address . "\\1-request@lists.debian.org")
(spam-autodetect . t)
(spam-autodetect-methods spam-use-gmane-xref spam-use-hashcash spam-use-BBDB)
(spam-process '(spam spam-use-resend))
(spam-report-resend-to . "report-listspam@lists.debian.org")
(subscribed . t)
(total-expire . t)
))
"""]]
#+END_HTML
