Page History

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2. The "release cycle" problem: Any high quality rules that are incorporated into SpamAssassin are not distributed until the next release. Since rules and code are tied together, the release cycle for rules is too long. Submitted rules are not distributed while they are most effective, and rules lose their effectiveness too quickly.'

LorenWilton added: '3. the instant an actual rule is posted on the user's list, it will lose about 80% of its effectiveness, usually within about 16 hours. Within a week it will be virtually useless. Sometimes the rule will regain some effectiveness a few months later, and in rare cases posting a rule will not affect the hit rate. But in general, public posting in a readable forum of a rule body will negate the usefulness of the rule almost instantly.'

The Solution

Based on the problem areas outlined above, here are the pages for each aspect of the problem, and proposed solutions:

• Encouraging contribution: RulesProjMoreInput
• Streamlining the 'getting rules into SpamAssassin' task: RulesProjStreamlining
• Speeding up the release cycle for rules: SaUpdatePlan
• the secrecy problem: RulesProjSecrecy