Italian Wikipedia

History

As early as March 2001, Jimmy Wales, the creator and co-founder of the original English language Wikipedia, had proposed the creation of parallel Wikipedia projects in other languages. The Italian-language version was among the first ones to be created, in May 2001. The original URL was , while the standardized ISO 639 address became active a few days later. Afterwards, Wikipedia sites switched their domains from to . The first pages (around 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 by then.

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 to articles was an automated bot which created stub articles on more than municipalities of Spain in an operation dubbed "Comuni spagnoli".

On 8 September 2005, the Italian Wikipedia overtook the Dutch Wikipedia and one day later, on 9 September, it passed 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 articles on municipalities of France. 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 (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 entries. On 22 January 2008, the entries were ; on 3 October, they were . The number of users had reached .

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 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. On 12 May 2011, it passed articles. On the same day, it overtook the Polish Wikipedia. On 12 March 2012, it passed articles. On 22 January 2013, it passed articles.

In April 2016, the project had 2,233 active editors who made at least five edits in that month, and as of March 2022, the project has 121 administrators.

2011 mass blanking protest

Main article: DDL intercettazioni, DDL intercettazioni#Paragraph 29

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), which was being debated at the time in the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian parliament.

The controversy largely centered on paragraph 29 of the proposed bill. According to a public statement by editors of the Italian Wikipedia:

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.

This was the first time that a Wikipedia had blanked all its content to protest. The Wikimedia Foundation officially supported the decision of the Italian Wikipedia by a statement released the same day. the manifesto, which replaced the Italian Wikipedia, had been viewed approximately 8 million times. On 6 October 2011, the website content was restored, with a banner across the top of each page explaining the reason for the protest.

Other shutdowns

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.

In November 2012, messages appeared on the Italian Wikipedia protesting the Italian Senate's Bill #3491, 3204, 3.400 and especially 3.207.

From 3 to 5 July 2018, to protest the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, the Italian Wikipedia displayed a site-wide banner supporting the protest, and disabled all searches and contributions.

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.

Features

• 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.
• Unlike English Wikipedia or Russian Wikipedia, there are optional disclaimers that may be displayed in the articles.

References

References

1. [[mailarchive:wikipedia-l/2001-May/000116.html. New language wikis]], Wikipedia-l mailing list.
2. [[:it:Speciale:Statistics]]. ''Italian Wikipedia'' (in Italian).
3. [[meta:List of Wikipedias. List of Wikipedias]]. ''Meta-Wiki''.
4. [https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2001-March/000048.html Alternative language wikipedias], Wikipedia-l mailing list. {{Webarchive. link. (2014-06-20 language wikipedias)
5. [[mailarchive:wikipedia-l/2001-May/000132.html. Re: new language wikis]], Wikipedia-l mailing list.
6. [[:it:Wikipedia:Ultime notizie. Wikipedia:Ultime_notizie]]. ''Italian Wikipedia'' (in Italian).
7. [[:it:Progetto:Comuni spagnoli. Progetto:Geografia/Antropica/Comuni_spagnoli]]. ''Italian Wikipedia'' (in Italian).
8. [[:it:Progetto:Amministrazioni/Comuni francesi. Progetto:Comuni_della_Francia]]. ''Italian Wikipedia'' (in Italian).
9. On 12 October 2010: {{formatnum:735444 (pl) vs {{formatnum:735375 (it)
10. "Camera dei Deputati: disegno di legge N. 1415-B". Camera dei Deputat.
11. (October 4, 2011). "Wikimedia blog » Blog Archive » Regarding recent events on Italian Wikipedia". Blog.wikimedia.org.
12. (October 4, 2011). "Wikipedia:Comunicato 4 ottobre 2011 ("Communication 4 October 2011")". Italian Wikipedia.
13. Hooper, John (27 September 2011). [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/sep/27/italy-bloggers-protest-right-reply-bill "Italy's bloggers to protest over 'fascist' right to reply bill"]. ''[[The Guardian]]''. Retrieved 6 October 2011.
14. [[:it:Wikipedia:Comunicato 4 ottobre 2011/en
15. (October 4, 2011). "Intercettazioni, Wikipedia protesta – Homepage in bianco: "Inaccettabile ddl"". [[la Repubblica]].
16. (October 4, 2011). "Wikipedia Hides Italian Language Edition to Protest New Law | PCWorld Business Center". Pcworld.com.
17. "Wikipedia article traffic statistics". Stats.grok.se.
18. "AFP: Wikipedia in Italian reopens after media law protest".
19. [https://it.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Sitenotice&diff=next&oldid=50604322 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."
20. [[:it:Wikipedia:Comunicato 24 ottobre 2012/en]]
21. (2018-07-03). "Italy Wikipedia shuts down in protest at EU copyright law". BBC News.
22. (2019-03-25). "Comunicati stampa/Blocco Wikipedia – Wikimedia Italia".
23. Porro, Gabriele. (2019-03-25). "Wikipedia Italia oscurata contro la riforma europea del copyright".