Question

Below please find why my server classified the notification as spam:

Content analysis details:   (5.00 points, 5 required)
NO_REAL_NAME       (1.1 points)  From: does not include a real name
HTML_FONT_COLOR_RED (0.1 points)  BODY: HTML font color is red
HTML_FONT_BIG      (0.2 points)  BODY: FONT Size +2 and up or 3 and up
HTML_SHOUTING9     (2.9 points)  BODY: HTML has very strong "shouting" markup
HTML_50_60         (0.1 points)  BODY: Message is 50% to 60% HTML
MAILTO_WITH_SUBJ   (0.6 points)  URI: Includes a link to send a mail with a subject

....

X-Spam-Flag: YES
X-Spam-Status: Yes, hits=5.0 required=5.0
        tests=HTML_50_60,HTML_FONT_BIG,HTML_FONT_COLOR_RED,
              HTML_SHOUTING9,MAILTO_WITH_SUBJ,NO_REAL_NAME
        version=2.55
X-Spam-Level: *****
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.55 (1.174.2.19-2003-05-19-exp)
MIME-Version: 1.0

If you have additional questions, please contact me directly via mail if possible, I will follow up here.

Thanks for the great stuff you provide

Stefan

Environment

-- StefanWolber - 06 Aug 2003

Answer

This is generated by SpamAssassin - the options here are to set your SA threshold higher (not desirable), to whitelist the TWiki server's email address (good option), or to modify the HTML generated (best option). One easy thing to try is the following - change CVSget:templates/mailnotify.tmpl so that it reads as follows (using a suitable description for your TWiki webmaster address):

From: %WIKIWEBMASTER% (TWiki web administrator)

Or you can try:

From: TWiki web administrator <%WIKIWEBMASTER%> 
To: %EMAILTO%

This should decrease score to 3.9 by eliminating the NO_REAL_NAME 'hit' above. Please comment here if this works.

Note that responding by email isn't really reasonable for support answers - just sign up to WebNotify for the next week or so to catch any responses.

-- RichardDonkin - 06 Aug 2003

Hi Richard,

thanks a lot for your extensive answer. I do not have any problems with the classification of the notifications as spam and I would put it in the white list to make things easy for me.

The reason for me to tell you about it is because I am operating spamassassin with almost the standard parameters. This way any spamassassine protected server will handle it in the same way and classify the notification as spam. I wanted to tell somebody so that you might take actions in the way the notifications are generated. To my opinion the "HTML_SHOUTING9" should be avoided.

I signed up in WebNotify, that is why I saw this problem. I asked for a separate mail because I am reading the automated notifications infrequently.

-- StefanWolber - 06 Aug 2003

Thanks for logging this - this is now in CVS for TWikiAlphaRelease as it's a simple change with no drawbacks I can see (also makes the mail notification look more friendly). The new %WIKIWEBMASTERNAME% variable (e.g. Peter Thoeny) is configurable in TWikiPreferences to support this without the user editing the template.

The Shouting markup would be harder to change and may be due to non-mailnotify-specific formatting.

-- RichardDonkin - 06 Aug 2003