Italian WikiFur

The Italian WikiFur is an Italian-language version of WikiFur. Its current article count is 1000+ as of Jan 2015, making it the second non-English WikiFur to have trespassed such a milestone (the first one being the Russian WikiFur). The site can be also reached from the address "Furry.it", which in the beginning was used by greymuzzle members of the national fandom as a small info page on furries.

Development
The Italian WikiFur has been founded by Ylon on May 4, 2009. The original intent of its author was to translate main articles from the English version of WikiFur to italian language ; his exact project has been presented on Furrymania.it's forum at its initial stage, showing 20+ pages of content. However, the project has been abandoned since then, and for the whole of 2010 there have been no significant updates to its system.

On October 26th, 2012 italian user Escofal from the FurryMania forum has shown interest into adding pages on the Italian WikiFur, involving another user, Valery91Thunder, in the project. The two users have, by then, added the majority of articles (mostly about furry media such as cartoons, videogames and books) importing information from the vast archive of Furrymania's Articles and Reviews section. The article count showed significant improvements in that period, counting 46+ in December 2012, and then 500+ in the summer of 2013. Along with articles regarding media, all previous pages about core information on furry fandom (such as fursona, fursuit, and furry pages) have been improved in content and grammar; pages regarding conventions, species, the history and demographics of the italian fandom, and pages on Italy's most relevant furry artists have been added; in that period, a first version of an improved frontpage was made as well as a rough scheme of it's category tree.

After a second, smaller hiatus, the works on the Italian WikiFur resumed in Autumn 2014 ; a newer, current version of its front page, community portal and category tree was added, as well as more pages regarding not only media but also subcultures and point of views revelant to the fandom; for the occasion, users Escofal and Valery91Thunder have created a mascot character to better represent the site. On December 14th, 2014, the Italian WikiFur has reached an article count of 1000 pages, bringing further knowledgebase to the national fandom.

With Furrymania's closing announced by May 2015, the Italian WikiFur frontpage will no longer show RSS feed features from its portal, becoming a project on its own instead of being a side project powered by Furrymania; however, the staff will continue to import informations on furry media from its historical portal and forum.

Contents
Since the italian furry fandom is heavily divided between hobbyists and lifestylers, and only the hobbist subfandom is associated with the WikiFur project, only a small staff currently works on adding new pages. Therefore, the majority of content pages listed on the Italian WikiFur regard media and media-centered characters and species. The categoriy tree has also been simplified to better work on the sites reduced content: for example, it doesn't show "Births" and "Deaths" categories; however, it features special categories to list italian furs and furry media produced in Italy.

Mascot
The official Italian WikiFur mascot is Ciro the swallow (Cyrus in English). The mascot's official design has been created by furry artist Escofal on September 28th, 2014 and it's used to decorate the frontpage, community portal page and other important templates as well as representing the Italian WikiFur and distinguishing it amongst the others. Cyrus has various details regarding his designs which are references to both Wikipedia and the italian territory, such as:
 * His species, as it's a common bird in Italy;
 * His name, which is taken from Ciro, a name researches gave to a Scipionyx Samniticus fossil discovered in Pietraroja in Italy;
 * His colours; white, blue and grey seen on his body are taken from the actual Wikipedia and WikiFur classic layout colours. The green and red are instead taken from the official colours of the italian flag;
 * His tail; both his shape and colours are references to the Frecce Tricolori.
 * His collar, which sports a puzzle-piece shaped medallion, considered a classic logo and symbol of the Wiki sites.