Another approach to solving the spam problem: list all new messages in your inbox based on a relevance rating. The idea is this: when you start reading your new mail, you start with the messages that are from co-workers, relatives, and so on, and eventually you get to the messages that look like spam. You might review the first few spam messages -- the ones that may or may not be spam -- then automatically trash the rest of them. This is different from a binary classification system that decides a yes-or-no question "Is this spam?"
Posted by Doug Sauder at January 11, 2003 04:26 PM