Who takes care of those newbies (every user? "Mentors" and if so, who decides that they become "mentors"?)
Everyone who wish, typically members of the WikiProject; there are also tutors from specific thematic WikiProjects who are supposed to help users interested in that subject. A user requests a tutore and someone accepts the request.
How do you handle newbies? Do you answer questions, do you "adopt" them in any way (templates, categories etc.)?
[Actually I don't know.] For general questions there is also the w:it:Aiuto:Sportello informazioni (help desk), heavily used by bot newbies and long time members. Sometimes users use the WikiProject page to ask specific questions or because of specific problems they have and after resolving them the "tutors" seem to think that they're work is finished.
Which ways of communication do you use?
Only the wiki itself. Sometimes IRC.
Teaching process
In which way do you teach your newbies (contents)?
How long do newbies usually stay in contact with the program?
About 3 months (informal rule).
What do you think are newbies needs?
Success
How many newbies and, in case you have mentors, how many mentors do you have in your Wikipedia (all in all/per month)? Please outline the development in the last years/months if possible.
Would you describe your project as successful? Why or why not? What would you like to improve?
How many articles have your newbies written?
Do you have problems with the inactivity of newbies?
Do you have any other numbers, facts, statistics about your program and would like to share them?
The project is not aimed at tutoring alone: it started to aggregate users interested in creating a more welcoming environment for new users, and to collect best practices about how to treat new users in everyday wiki-work, to verify the welcoming operations (performed by a bot which adds the name of a random user among those who listed themselves to welcome users: welcomed users often thank the "welcoming" user and then use him as a source of help) and to propose policy changes to facilitate new users. Because of that, the WikiProject page is currently quite a mess and the actuaal mentoring program is still not completely structured.
