Dear Sir, I have used PAN's scoring rules in the past. It was often noted that an email-based discussion forum had, and has, irrelevant posts, often by trolls, and whatever memory I retain of PAN, there is no method to mark individual messages as irrelevant, i.e., by low scores, among a plethora of messages belonging to a particular thread (header). I wanted a pre-filter desparately, but I knew of none who actually did it. Claws was not within my awareness horizon!
In claws-mail I can specifically use the pre-filters to mark a particular message to not download it, or a group of messages in future, if it, or they, comes, or came, from say, Jon Dhow (spelling changed intentionally). I am certain, as a former user of PAN, of its special utilities, but pre-filter incorporation can take it to the next level, like, ..., okay, time for an example: Once the computer was for the most erudite, because it was expensive and it was worked upon by only a handful of people. Today, it is ubiquitous in the form of mobile phones. The difference is because many, like you, have worked hard day and night, to simplify things for non-erudite users. Scoring messages in terms of discrete numbers is not intuitive and simple as it appears, and is perhaps even nerdy. It is difficult for an average individual to maintain objectivity while scoring, or even more distant, remembering the evaluation methodologies developed and continue maintaining that standard. We have a limited memory, cognitive window and attention span. Yes, it would altogether be different if there was a distinct algorithm to do it for us, but assuming that there are -9999 to +9999 scoring points, theoretically, there needs to be 19,998 seperate rules (or algorithms) just to mark messages. And even more importantly, it would need an elaborate planning from a dedicated planner to form those rules. Again, falling into the hands of algorithm makers or masters, like Stallman says. But setting up filters, as many as possible, with AND, OR, and NOT combinations, based on phrases contained, or not contained, are the real aces -- intuitive and simple. It saves bandwidth as well. So let us incorporate this technique within PAN by its next release. Regards, Rajib Bandopadhyay _______________________________________________ Pan-devel mailing list Pan-devel@nongnu.org https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/pan-devel
