Italian Wikipedia
 | |
Type of site | Internet encyclopedia project |
|---|---|
| Available in | Italian |
| Headquarters | Miami, Florida |
| Owner | Wikimedia Foundation |
| Created by | Italian wiki community |
| URL | http://it.wikipedia.org/ |
| Commercial | No |
| Registration | Optional |
Italian Wikipedia (Wikipedia in italiano) is the Italian-language edition of Wikipedia. This edition was started in January 2002 and has over 320,000 articles, as of July 16, 2007. [1]
In August 2005 the Italian Wikipedia overtook the Spanish and Portuguese language editions, becoming the 8th largest edition by article count. The primary reason for the rapid leap from 56,000 to 64,000 articles was an automated bot which created stub articles on more than 8,000 municipalities of Spain in an operation dubbed "Comuni spagnoli". [2] [3]
On September 8, the Italian Wikipedia overtook the Dutch Wikipedia and one day later, on September 9, it passed 100,000 articles. On September 11, it overtook the Swedish Wikipedia, becoming the fifth-largest language edition. Again, automated scripts contributed heavily to the growth. For instance, a bot created more than 35,000 articles on municipalities of France. [4] However it was overtaken by the Polish edition on September 23, 2005.
During December 2006, the Italian Wikipedia had more than 220,000 articles and passed 100,000 users, and there were about 88 administrators. The amount of administrators has considerably increased during the last few months because of the growing problem with vandalism and copyright violations (which, in some cases, have gone undetected for two or three years). A greater number of administrators will probably be required to get rid of the copyright violations, which have spread to several hundreds of articles. Because of this, general policies are being discussed and new measures are being taken. For example, new users will now be able to follow an exhaustive "tutorial" regarding copyrights of text and images.
On August 20, 2007 the Italian Wikipedia reached 338,000 articles.
Features
- As of August 2007, the Italian Wikipedia counts 195.000 registered users and 92 administrators.
- The Italian Wikipedia currently accepts free images licensed under the GFDL and Creative Commons. Fair use images have been rejected since April 2006 due to potential copyright problems, and many of them were subsequently replaced during 2007 with equivalents which follow Italian law. Due to some problems with images and the management of the sister project Wikimedia Commons, the community reached an agreement with the Wikimedia Foundation. The agreement was called "Exemption Doctrine Policy", which allows users to upload images which comply with Italian law but are not suitable for Commons.
- Unlike the French and English Wikipedias, the Italian Wikipedia does not have an Arbitration Committee.
- The Italian Wikipedia has used automated scripts to create articles, such as French and Spanish towns, or asteroids, all of which comprise roughly 20% of the total article count.
- Administrators are elected through a vote; a minimal quorum of 65-70 voters and 80% of support votes are required if the request is to be considered successful. Any administrator is automatically open to recall after a year of service. The community then decides wheter to let them keep the role or not with a vote. Administrators who have been inactive (have not used any administrative tools such as the "delete" or "block" buttons) for six months automatically lose their privileges.
External links
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