with the spam debate, the two policy views are not really technical but social. it's just two groups of enthusiastic users on a common mission, who all hate spam, but have different views about what a parameter should be one motivated by social signaling reasons the klingon mindset - instinct to fight, the other for technical and economic rational reasons - the vulcan/spock mindset, dont get mad do the cold calm logical thing. the developers are actually also mad about spam, most of the mainline ones, because it's offensively wasteful, but they have necessarily better control of emotional reactions, so they try to keep to the logic side. now we can run different parameters ourselves and be happy both views happy. and there is a mildy correct technical answer to what the parameter should be for objective network measures. both competing views would prefer it to reflect their view: the filterors, their social view, and the realists: their technical/economic view (annoyed about spam, but pragmatic non-filter view). unfortunately the non-filter people have the disadvantage that they're not making an appealing call, not a karate kick to the face that repeatedly misses the spammers, but a tai chi move to deftly avoid hurting the network, with the zen to suck up the irritation and fight instinct to do what is better technically and economically rational.