This option causes SpamSieve to automatically train itself with newly received
messages based on their predicted categories. The allowlist will stay up-to-date
so that messages from previous correspondents are never marked as spam. Also,
after the initial training you would only need to train SpamSieve to
correct its mistakes. It would automatically learn from the other new
messages, as needed, trying to keep a proper balance of good and spam messages
in the corpus. As the corpus increases in size, the rate of auto-training will
automatically decrease to prevent it from growing too large.
Most SpamSieve users should keep auto-training on at all times. Reasons
that you might turn it off include:
- Testing Purposes
- If you’re trying to figure out why SpamSieve is processing a
certain kind of message in a certain way, turning off auto-training
reduces the interactions among SpamSieve’s components and makes it
easier to see what’s happening.
- Unable to Correct Mistakes
- When auto-training is enabled, it is imperative that you correct
SpamSieve when it makes a mistake; otherwise it will “learn” things
that aren’t true and begin making predictions based on that
incorrect information. If your mail program and filters are set up
such that you cannot tell when SpamSieve has made a mistake (or if
you can see the mistakes but sometimes forget to correct them), then
you should not use auto-training.
- Multiple Copies of SpamSieve
- If you are using multiple copies of SpamSieve (on different Macs) to
filter the same IMAP account, it’s hard to know which one(s) to
correct when a mistake is made. With auto-training off, you don’t
have to worry about that.
- Bulk Processing
- For example, if SpamSieve will be processing a large number of
incoming messages in a row, and you will not be able to correct any
mistakes until later. In this case, using auto-training could
magnify one or two mistakes into many, as SpamSieve would assume
that it had classified the earlier messages correctly, and learned
from that (possibly incorrect) assumption.
- Delayed Corrections
- If it will be a long time between when SpamSieve filters some messages and
when you can correct any mistakes, the situation is similar to Bulk
Processing, so you may want to turn off auto-training. If you’ll be away
from your SpamSieve Mac but have other mail access, you can eliminate the
delay by using remote traininng. See the Setting Up a Spam Filtering
Drone section.
SpamSieve automatically suppresses auto-training when using the Filter
Messages command.