Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-09-05/Interwiki report

Status and community news
As of 3 September, 2006, the Italian-language Wikipedia consisted of about 192,000 articles. Since September 2005, when it counted 68,173 articles, Italian Wikipedia's article growth index has been 182 percent.

Among these, 176 articles (approximately 1 in 1090) are considered voci di qualità ("Voices of quality," the Italian Wikipedia equivalent for featured articles ). The Italian language Wikipedia as yet has no equivalent for the good articles page in the English or Lesenswerte Artikel in the German Wikipedia.

The latest six additions to the list of voci di qualità are Catania, Bibliothèque nationale de France (National Library of France), Lalla Fadhma, Adelboden, Campanile di Giotto (Giotto's Bell Tower) and Santa Reparata.

As of 3 September, 2006, the total number of registered users is approximately 88,000, while active users (editors with more than 100 edits per month) is currently estimated at approximatly 300 people. 53 users of the Italian Wikipedia have been appointed as administrators. This makes the sysops of it.wiki 0.06% of all users, a comparable percentage to the English (0.05%), German (0.08%) or French Wikipedias (0.08%).

Recent changes
Winds of change in the Italian Wikipedia community: last July the community chose a brand new layout for the Main Page that went on-line on July 20; furthermore a new structure for the Bar (the Italian equivalent for the Village Pump) has been adopted during the first days of August. There will probably be a poll about this new version during the first weeks of September.

Festival della qualità
Every month, the community sets up one or two Festival della qualità (that stands for Quality Festival) in order to improve the quality of selected articles and pages.

The aim of the current Festival (from 5 August to the end of August) is to create new quality articles concerning words which are commonly used in the Italian language. Up to 22 August, 61 new articles of this kind have been written. This is a good result, considering that the month of August is commonly the height of vacation period in Italy (lots of wikipedians are still in "Wikipause").

The previous Festival (held from 20 July to 3 August) was dedicated to the articles tagged as da wikificare (articles that need to be wikified in en.wiki). As a result of that festival 785 articles were wikified.

Prizes
On 14 December 2005, the Italian Wikipedia has been awarded with 2 premi WWW (WWW prizes) by the Italian financial newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore. The first prize was for the Istruzione e Lavoro (Educational and Work) category, for being the new landmark in Italy for online knowledge. The second prize was for the Internet Educational category because it is a free encylopedia, made by a collective intelligence, enhancing knowledge dissemination and its free access.

Media reports
The Italian Wikipedia is often quoted on Italian media, as shown in the Rassegna stampa page (same as the en.wiki Press coverage). In recent months, Italian media has increased it.wp's coverage and interviewed some of its administrators. The last interview of an Italian sysop has been broadcast, on 14 August, by Rai Uno, the main channel of RAI, the Italian public broadcasting company.

Wikimedia Italia Meeting 2006 and Wikiraduni
The second Wikimedia Italia Meeting took place on 2 September and 3 in Valentano, near Viterbo. During the meeting, members of Wikimedia Italia (the Italian local chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation) renewed social charges and approved the yearly budget of the association.

This "official" meeting is not the only one for Italian contributors. Actually, they meet each other quite often: the last Wikiraduno (Wikipedia:Meetups) took place in Milan on 6 August. Other remarkable Wikiraduni that took place during last spring and summer were in Piacenza, Zurich, Vicenza, Genova and Bologna, some of them as part of bigger meetings or conventions.

Other projects
Apart from the Wikipedia, there are several Wikimedia projects in Italian language. They are Wikinotizie (like Wikinews in English), Wikisource, Wikispecies, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikizionario (like Wiktionary in English).

There are also a large number of younger sisters of the Italian Wikipedia, like Wikipedias in Arpitano, Catalano, Corso, Friulano, Latino, Ligure, Lombardo, Napoletano, Piemontese, Romancio, Sardo, Siciliano, and Veneto languages. They are local languages that are spoken in the nearby regions of Italy and Switzerland.