How does SA auto white-list works?

[Dhawal Doshy]

Quoting Scott Silva <ssilva at sgvwater.com>:

> Matt Kettler spake the following on 7/13/2006 12:09 PM:
>> René Berber wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I'm using the SA auto white-list feature with MailScanner 4.54.6,   
>>> and there's
>>> something confusing in the result I'm seeing: a score is added if   
>>> the address is
>>> white listed.  Shouldn't it be subtracted?
>>>
>>
>> Despite it's name, the AWL is NOT a whitelist. It's called that for  
>>  lack of any
>> better name that isn't huge.
>>
>> The AWL is really a "History-based average score tracking system   
>> with automatic
>> whitelist and blacklist behaviors resulting from factoring past   
>> performance into
>> current scores".  But HBASTSAWBBRFPPICS is a rather long acronym.
>>
>> Please read:
>>
>> http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/AutoWhitelist
>>
>> and
>>
>> http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/AwlWrongWay
> Isn't that what bayes is supposed to be?

Bayes will tokenize the entire message.. whereas awl only maintains a  
count of the 'from email-address' / 'IP-address pair' and averages the  
score.

- dhawal