[Spamassassin Wiki] Update of "RulesProjectPlan" by JustinMason

[Apache Wiki <wi...@apache.org>]

Dear Wiki user,

You have subscribed to a wiki page or wiki category on "Spamassassin Wiki" for change notification.

The following page has been changed by JustinMason:
http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/RulesProjectPlan

The comment on the change is:
discussion doc from mailing list discussion

New page:
= SpamAssassin Rules Project =

'''(DRAFT - this part of the wiki is a discussion document, based on emails to dev list.  Please feel free to add comments, but be sure to make clear that it's your opinion, by signing your name to them.)'''

== The Problem ==

Here it is, stated by DuncanFindlay: 'SpamAssassin is not as effective as it could be because of the rules that are being used to detect spam. There are two problems here:

1. The "not enough rules" problem: SpamAssassin does not have enough high quality spam-catching rules. Anecdotally, our FN ratio seems to be much higher with 3.1 than with 3.0 (we won't know for sure until the mass-checks are done). There may be a variety of reasons for this:

   * The SpamAssassin committers are not spending much time writing rules. Attempts to recruit people to become committers to write rules have been somewhat unsuccessful. We could always use more committers and contributors; what can we do to encourage more contribution?

   * People that do write rules for their own use are not willing to go through the fairly elaborate process in order to submit them to SpamAssassin (this currently requires rules to go through bugzilla and then through 70_testing.cf and eventually into our distribution). What can we do to make this process easier and more inviting?

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.'

== 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