Hello,
Platonides wrote:
I was thinking on a FTP server where you log in with your wiki credentials and get to a private temporary folder. You can view pending files, delete, rename, append and create new ones (you can't read them though, to avoid being used as a sharing service). You are given a quota so you could upload a few large files or many small ones. Files get deleted after X time untouched. When you go to the page name it would have on the wiki there's a message reminding you of a pending upload an inviting you to finish it, where you get the normal upload fields. After transferring, the file gets public and you are returned the file size quota. Having a specific protocol for uploads also allow to store them directly on the storage nodes, instead of writing them via nfs from the apaches.
Internet Archive has such a system, so it might worth asking them rather than reinventing hot water.
http://www.archive.org/services/contrib-submit.php (for simpler cases), or http://www.us.archive.org/contrib_submit.php (for more complex ones)
(Adding files to an existing item might make this a "more complex" case, requiring use of replacing=1 or update_mode=1.)
Information on use of http://www.archive.org/services/contrib-submit.php is available at: http://www.archive.org/help/contrib-advanced.php
and information on use of http://www.us.archive.org/contrib_submit.php is available at: http://www.us.archive.org/contrib_submit.php?help=1
Yann