Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-08-07/Interwiki report

Status and community news
As of Tuesday, 1 August 2006, the French language Wikipedia contained about 337,357 articles. Of these, 290 articles (approximately 1 in 1200) are considered Articles de qualité (the French Wikipedia equivalent of featured articles). The French language Wikipedia has no equivalent of good articles page in the English or Lesenswerte Artikel in the German Wikipedia yet. In addition, 15 portals are considered Portails de qualité.

The latest three additions to the list of articles de qualité are: Battle of Adrianople (fr:Bataille d'Andrinople), Eiffel Tower (fr:Tour Eiffel) and Domestication (fr:espèce domestiquée).

As of 1 August 2006, 106 users of the French Wikipedia are administrators. This makes 0.08% of users out of a total number of 134,124 registered users.

Médiamétrie
A poll about internet traffic showed that Wikipedia was the 21st most visited website by French web surfers. 4,355,000 or 16% of the total have visited Wikipedia at least one time during June 2006. Wikipedia had the biggest growth of web traffic in 2005. At the beginning of year 2005 Wikipedia was in 137th position and by the end of the year Wikipedia landed in the 37th.

In the media
Since January 2006, there has been established a column about the French Wikipedia, called Wikifeuilleton in a weekly satirical newspaper called Le Tigre. The columnist relates passionate debates which have occurred during 2006 in the Wikipedia, like the discussion about a dictator category or an incredible story of a sysop having about ten sock puppets.

Interview of scholars for Wikipedia
The portal of the zoological and botanical history (Portail:Histoire de la zoologie et de la botanique) has launched a new feature. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time that an interview is realised for Wikipedia. For the moment, one interview is available on the portal and three more are in the pipeline. The first of the series is an interview of Jean Lescure, an herpetologist working at the French national museum of natural history (first part and second part).

Linné and Buffon tercentenary
For the tercentenary of Buffon and Linnaeus, two well-known biologists, two projects have been set up (Projet:Buffon 2007 and Projet:Linné 2007). Valérie75, the Wikipedian behind these Wikiprojects, has two ambituous goals. First, make Wikipedia a reliable reference on this subject. Second, try to make some contacts with the scientific community. These two projects are progressing well. In a few days, Valérie75 is going to meet a French specialist of Buffon's work. We strongly encourage wikipedians to implement similar projects in their communities. Valérie75 would be happy to provide you with further details and advice.