Italian Wikipedia

URL	http://it.wikipedia.org/
Commercial?	No
Type of site	Internet encyclopedia project
Registration	Optional
Available language(s)	Italian
Owner	Wikimedia Foundation
Created by	Italian wiki community

The Italian Wikipedia (Italian: Wikipedia in italiano) is the Italian-language edition of Wikipedia. This edition was started in January 2002 and has over 527,000 articles and more than 338,000 registered accounts as of January 5, 2009^[1]. Currently, it is the 6th-largest Wikipedia as measured by the number of articles.

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, 2005, 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.

In 2009 the Italian Wikipedia was awarded the Premiolino, the oldest and most prestigious Italian journalism prize, in the new media category.

[edit] Notes and references

[edit] External links

Italian Wikipedia edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• (Italian) Italian Wikipedia