I run a MediaWiki installation at work, and I'm investigating whether we can CC/forward mail messages directly into the Wiki. This will make it easier for information to get in there, at least in raw form, and hence accelerate acceptance.
I've been poking around various pages, and the archives of this list, and I see that this has come up before, and there is even some code, but it always concentrates on accepting specially formatted messages which specify the page name, and include a plain (or wiki) text payload. It seems to me that this is barely worthwhile, as its almost as easy to copy it into a web browser.
In my company (and I'm sure I'm not alone in this), people send each other a lot of rich format e-mail, especially Word and Excel documents. I want to make it easier for these to get into the wiki.
What I'm looking for is a way to accept any arbitrary mail message in a way that will be usuable. This means that attachments of various types need to be handled and uploaded as separate pages, then linked from the main article. The main article needs a generated name, say using the message-id or a GUID. Primitive indexing could be done with creative use of categories. Any message that turns out to be crucial will quickly be linked to from the appropriate place.
I know that the answer to this is "implement it yourself", but I'm surprised that no-one seems to have thought about this, or attempted an implementation. Am I terribly misguided here? Is anyone already working on this? Is anyone interested in collaborating?
Cheers, [[en:User:Bovlb]]
Some pages I have looked at: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mail-to-wiki_gateway http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2005-September/thread.html#6... http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2005-September/thread.html#7... http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2005-August/thread.html#6197