An Examination of the Culture of Impartiality in Wikipedia, A Case Study of the Islamic World Representation in the English and Persian Versions of the Wikipedia

It is necessary for the editors to observe the culture of impartiality while editing the texts in order to preserve the value and life of this critical encyclopedia. Since everybody is allowed to edit Wikipedia entries, observing impartiality is practically and mostly dependent on the good will of the Wikipedians causing some Muslims accuse Wikipedia of defying from impartiality to the Islamic world. Therefore the question to be addressed is "how is the culture of impartiality among the Wikipedia editors and users in the process of representing the Islamic World?" The research is carried out through the qualitative content analysis method and the deductive category application during a coded instruction including fourteen indicators (five dichotomous categories and nine references) which has surprisingly demonstrated high level of impartiality culture among the users of both Persian and English versions of the Wikipedia in the editing process of texts on the Muslim World. More surprisingly, it was shown that the proportion of positive to negative views on Islamic World is 0.89 in the Persian Wikipedia, while being 1.07 in the English Wikipedia.