The Italian Wikipedia (Italian: Wikipedia in italiano) is the Italian-language edition of Wikipedia. This edition was created on 10 May 2001,[1] and first edited on 11 June 2001. As of 17 November 2024, it has 1,891,536 articles and more than 2,572,978 registered accounts.[2] It is the 9th-largest Wikipedia by the number of articles (after the English, Swedish, German, Dutch, French, Cebuano, Russian, and Spanish editions).[3]
As early as March 2001, Jimmy Wales, the creator and co-founder of the original English languageWikipedia, had proposed the creation of parallel Wikipedia projects in other languages.[4] The Italian-language version was among the first ones to be created, in May 2001. The original URL was italian.wikipedia.com, while the standardized ISO 639 address it.wikipedia.com became active a few days later.[5] Afterwards, Wikipedia sites switched their domains from wikipedia.com to wikipedia.org. The first pages (circa five hundred) were simply untranslated copies from the English-language Wikipedia; the first edits were made from 11 June 2001, onwards.
One of the earlier edits was an appeal to help Nupedia; the first entries on the Italian Wikipedia were the pages on Dante Alighieri, Petrarch, Manzoni, and other Italian writers. The edits were not numerous, and the priority was initially given to helping Nupedia; the lemmas were just twenty or thirty, and there were about ten users. With the end of the Nupedia project, the situation began to improve for the Italian Wikipedia: users started to sign in, and the functions of administrators and semi-protection were implemented. This happened by 2004; the number of articles was now 56,000.
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".[6][7]
On 8 September 2005, the Italian Wikipedia overtook the Dutch Wikipedia and one day later, on 9 September, it passed 100,000 articles. On 11 September, 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.[8] However, it was overtaken by the Polish edition on 23 September 2005.
In June 2006, Italian Wikipedia users independently created the Template:Bio (with "Bio" being a diminutive of biografia, "biography"). On 23 October, the Polish version again surpassed the Italian Wikipedia by number of articles. As of 16 October 2006, the registered number of users was 100,000 (90 of which were administrators).
In 2007, the Italian Wikipedia adopted an Exemption Doctrine Policy, shared with other Wikipedias. In the same year, on 21 May, there were more than 300,000 entries. On 22 January 2008, the entries were 400,000; on 3 October, they were 500,000. The number of users had reached 250,000.
In 2009 the Italian Wikipedia was awarded the Premiolino, the oldest and most prestigious Italian journalism prize, in the new media category.
On 22 June 2010, it passed 700,000 articles (Robie House – 700,000th article). On 28 September 2010, the Italian Wikipedia overtook the Polish Wikipedia, becoming the 4th largest edition, though in October 2010 the numbers on both Wikipedias were very close, and as of 2011 the Polish Wikipedia was in the lead again.[9] On 12 May 2011, it passed 800,000 articles. On the same day, it overtook the Polish Wikipedia. On 12 March 2012, it passed 900,000 articles. On 22 January 2013, it passed 1,000,000 articles.
In April 2016, the project had 2233 active editors who made at least five edits in that month, and as of March 2022, the project has 121 administrators.
From 4 to 6 October 2011, a knowledge blackout was in place. During this time, all pages on the Italian Wikipedia project were redirected to this one-page Manifesto.
From 4 to 6 October 2011, following a decision adopted by volunteers of the Italian Wikipedia community, a knowledge blackout was in place. During this time, all of the site's articles were hidden and the website was blocked by its administrators, as a protest against the DDL intercettazioni (Wiretapping Bill),[10] which was being debated at the time in the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian parliament.[11]
The controversy largely centered on paragraph 29 of the proposed bill.[12] According to a public statement by editors of the Italian Wikipedia:[12]
At this time, the Italian language Wikipedia may be no longer able to continue providing the service that over the years was useful to you, and that you expected to have right now. As things stand, the page you want still exists and is only hidden, but the risk is that soon we will be forced by Law to actually delete it.
Today, unfortunately, the very pillars on which Wikipedia has been built—neutrality, freedom, and verifiability of its contents—are likely to be heavily compromised by paragraph 29 of a law proposal, also known as "DDL intercettazioni" (Wiretapping Act). This proposal, which the Italian Parliament is currently debating, provides, among other things, a requirement to all websites to publish, within 48 hours of the request and without any comment, a correction of any content that the applicant deems detrimental to his/her image.
Unfortunately, the law does not require an evaluation of the claim by an impartial third judge—the opinion of the person allegedly injured is all that is required, in order to impose such correction to any website. Hence, anyone who feels offended by any content published on a blog, an online newspaper and, most likely, even on Wikipedia would have the right for a statement ("correction") to be shown, unaltered, on the page, aimed to contradict and disprove the allegedly harmful contents, regardless of the truthfulness of the information deemed as offensive, and its sources.
The bill allowed for a fine of between €9,500 and €12,000.[13]
This was the first time that a Wikipedia had blanked all its content to protest.[14][15][16] The Wikimedia Foundation officially supported the decision of the Italian Wikipedia by a statement released the same day.[11]As of 5October2011[update] the manifesto, which replaced the Italian Wikipedia, had been viewed approximately 8 million times.[17] On 6 October 2011, the website content was restored, with a banner across the top of each page explaining the reason for the protest.[18]
Other shutdowns
The main page on 18 January 2012. The body text reads, "The Italian Wikipedia welcomes and expresses its solidarity with the protests of its colleagues on the English Wikipedia against the Stop Online Piracy act and the PROTECT IP Act. These bills, if approved by the U.S. Congress, would limit the freedom of the web and the very survival of Wikipedia."
On 18 January 2012, the English Wikipedia was shut down for 24 hours, following a decision by contributors to protest against two bills being examined by the Congress of the United States: the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act. On that day, the Italian Wikipedia redirected users from its own main page to a black page with a message of support for the decision of the English encyclopedia. Users could then click to access the Italian encyclopedia's content normally.
On 10 July 2012, when the Russian Wikipedia was closed to protest State Duma’s debating of amendments to the law "On information" (Law Project No. 89417-6), the Italian Wikipedia displayed a site-wide banner supporting the protest.[19]
The Italian Wikipedia approves of, and is in solidarity with, the Russian Wikipedia's protest against the proposed law being debated in the Duma. This change in the law, if approved, would permit the Russian government to create a blacklist preventing access to specific websites, like the Great Chinese Firewall.
Message shown on Italian Wikipedia on 25 March 2019
From 25 March 2019 for the following 24 hours, Italian Wikipedia contents were not accessible, replaced by a message encouraging the readers to contact their European Parliament representatives to vote against Article 11 and Article 13 of the European Copyright Directive to be discussed on 26 May.[22][23]
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.
The Italian Wikipedia has used automated scripts to create articles, much like the English Wikipedia.
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 whether 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.
Related Research Articles
Wikipedia, a free-content online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers known as Wikipedians, began with its first edit on 15 January 2001, two days after the domain was registered. It grew out of Nupedia, a more structured free encyclopedia, as a way to allow easier and faster drafting of articles and translations.
A wiki is a form of hypertext publication on the internet which is collaboratively edited and managed by its audience directly through a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages that can either be edited by the public or limited to use within an organization for maintaining its internal knowledge base.
The English Wikipedia is the primary English-language edition of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. It was created by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on 15 January 2001, as Wikipedia's first edition.
Wikisource is an online wiki-based digital library of free-content textual sources operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikisource is the name of the project as a whole; it is also the name for each instance of that project, one for each language. The project's aim is to host all forms of free text, in many languages, and translations. Originally conceived as an archive to store useful or important historical texts, it has expanded to become a general-content library. The project officially began on November 24, 2003, under the name Project Sourceberg, a play on Project Gutenberg. The name Wikisource was adopted later that year and it received its own domain name.
The Chinese Wikipedia is the written vernacular Chinese edition of Wikipedia. It has been run by the Wikimedia Foundation since 11 May 2001.
The German Wikipedia is the German-language edition of Wikipedia, a free and publicly editable online encyclopedia.
The Portuguese Wikipedia is the Portuguese-language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. It was started on 11 May 2001.
The Dutch Wikipedia is the Dutch-language edition of the free online encyclopedia, Wikipedia. It was founded on 19 June 2001.
The Czech Wikipedia is the Czech language edition of Wikipedia. Currently 2,331 active users and 32 administrators maintain the encyclopedia's 556,590 articles.
Baidu Baike is a semi-regulated Chinese-language collaborative online encyclopedia owned by the Chinese technology company Baidu. The beta version was launched on 20 April 2006, and the official version was launched on 21 April 2008. In November 2019, it had more than 16million articles and 6.9million editors. As of February 2022, it has more than 25.54million entries and 7.5million editors. It has the largest number of entries in the world of any Chinese-language online encyclopedia.
Scholarpedia is an English-language wiki-based online encyclopedia with features commonly associated with open-access online academic journals, which aims to have quality content in science and medicine.
Wikivoyage is a free web-based travel guide for travel destinations and travel topics written by volunteer authors. It is a sister project of Wikipedia and supported and hosted by the same non-profit Wikimedia Foundation (WMF). Wikivoyage has been called the "Wikipedia of travel guides".
The history of wikis began in 1994, when Ward Cunningham gave the name "WikiWikiWeb" to the knowledge base, which ran on his company's website at c2.com, and the wiki software that powered it. The wiki went public in March 1995, the date used in anniversary celebrations of the wiki's origins. c2.com is thus the first true wiki, or a website with pages and links that can be easily edited via the browser, with a reliable version history for each page. He chose "WikiWikiWeb" as the name based on his memories of the "Wiki Wiki Shuttle" at Honolulu International Airport, and because "wiki" is the Hawaiian word for "quick".
The Swedish Wikipedia is the Swedish-language edition of Wikipedia, started in 2001. A free content online encyclopedia, it is the largest reference work in Swedish history, while consistently ranked as the most visited, or one of the most visited Swedish language websites.
Wikipedia has been studied extensively. Between 2001 and 2010, researchers published at least 1,746 peer-reviewed articles about the online encyclopedia. Such studies are greatly facilitated by the fact that Wikipedia's database can be downloaded without help from the site owner.
Wikitravel is a web-based collaborative travel guide based on the wiki format and owned by Internet Brands. It was most active from 2003 through 2012, when most of its editing community left and brought their contributions to the nonprofit Wikivoyage guide.
Bomis, Inc. was a dot-com company best known for supporting the creations of free-content online-encyclopedia projects Nupedia and Wikipedia. It was co-founded in 1996 by Jimmy Wales, Tim Shell, and Michael Davis. By 2007, the company was inactive, with its Wikipedia-related resources transferred to the Wikimedia Foundation.
Nupedia was an English-language online encyclopedia whose articles were written by volunteer contributors with relevant subject matter expertise, reviewed by expert editors before publication, and licensed as free content. It was founded by Jimmy Wales and underwritten by Bomis, with Larry Sanger as editor-in-chief. Nupedia operated from October 1999 until September 2003. It is best known today as the predecessor of Wikipedia. Nupedia had a seven-step approval process to control content of articles before being posted, rather than live wiki-based updating. Nupedia was designed by a committee of experts who predefined the rules. It had only 21 articles in its first year, compared with Wikipedia having 200 articles in the first month, and 18,000 in the first year.
DDL Intercettazioni or the Wiretapping Bill is a piece of legislation put periodically before the Italian Parliament, but never passed.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and a topical guide to Wikipedia:
↑ MediaWiki:Sitenotice"Wikipedia in lingua italiana approva ed esprime solidarietà verso la protesta dei colleghi dell'edizione in lingua russa contro una proposta di legge in discussione alla Duma di Stato. Tale proposta di legge, se approvata, permetterebbe al governo russo di creare una blacklist per impedire l'accesso a determinati siti internet, al pari del Great Firewall cinese."
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