9.17.8.2 Splitting mail using spam-stat

This section describes how to use the Spam statistics independently of the See Spam Package.

First, add the following to your ~/.gnus.el file:

(require 'spam-stat)
(spam-stat-load)

This will load the necessary Gnus code, and the dictionary you created.

Next, you need to adapt your fancy splitting rules: You need to determine how to use spam-stat. The following examples are for the nnml back end. Using the nnimap back end works just as well. Just use nnimap-split-fancy instead of nnmail-split-fancy.

In the simplest case, you only have two groups, ‘mail.misc’ and ‘mail.spam’. The following expression says that mail is either spam or it should go into ‘mail.misc’. If it is spam, then spam-stat-split-fancy will return ‘mail.spam’.

(setq nnmail-split-fancy
      `(| (: spam-stat-split-fancy)
          "mail.misc"))

Variable: spam-stat-split-fancy-spam-group

The group to use for spam. Default is ‘mail.spam’.

If you also filter mail with specific subjects into other groups, use the following expression. Only mails not matching the regular expression are considered potential spam.

(setq nnmail-split-fancy
      `(| ("Subject" "\\bspam-stat\\b" "mail.emacs")
          (: spam-stat-split-fancy)
          "mail.misc"))

If you want to filter for spam first, then you must be careful when creating the dictionary. Note that spam-stat-split-fancy must consider both mails in ‘mail.emacs’ and in ‘mail.misc’ as non-spam, therefore both should be in your collection of non-spam mails, when creating the dictionary!

(setq nnmail-split-fancy
      `(| (: spam-stat-split-fancy)
          ("Subject" "\\bspam-stat\\b" "mail.emacs")
          "mail.misc"))

You can combine this with traditional filtering. Here, we move all HTML-only mails into the ‘mail.spam.filtered’ group. Note that since spam-stat-split-fancy will never see them, the mails in ‘mail.spam.filtered’ should be neither in your collection of spam mails, nor in your collection of non-spam mails, when creating the dictionary!

(setq nnmail-split-fancy
      `(| ("Content-Type" "text/html" "mail.spam.filtered")
          (: spam-stat-split-fancy)
          ("Subject" "\\bspam-stat\\b" "mail.emacs")
          "mail.misc"))