AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): WikiShia is a virtual encyclopedia whose mission is to explain concepts that are effective in understanding Shia and other Islamic denominations following the AhlulBayt (a.s.) school. These concepts include beliefs, persons, fields of science - such as theology, Fiqh (jurisprudence), and Osul Fiqh (principles of jurisprudence) - books, places, events, ceremonies and rituals, sects that believe in the AhlulBayt (a.s.), the history of Shiism and any other concept that is somehow related to the AhlulBayt (a.s.) and their followers. Lexicons and names that are necessary to fulfill this mission are explained in this encyclopedia.
In WikiShia, it is avoided to present personal analyses and opinions as well as unproven new theories; it is up to the readers to decide on scientific and historical disputes, and WikiShia is impartial in these cases. Considering the religious differences, the WikiShia authors intend to use the first-hand and accepted sources of the two major Islamic sects (Shia and Sunni). WikiShia is affiliated with the AhlulBayt (a.s.) World Assembly and the encyclopedia is currently active in twenty-two languages and has 7,814 articles in the Persian language.
In an interview with the AhlulBayt (a.s.) News Agency - ABNA - Ebrahim Amini, the director of the WikiShia virtual encyclopedia, discussed the motivations for launching the encyclopedia, its distinctive features, the status of foreign languages active in the encyclopedia, and the policies of the encyclopedia.
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By: Mehdi Helfi
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ABNA: How was the establishment of the WikiShia initiated?
Amini: WikiShia was launched in June 2013. There was a feeling of gap back then about correct, accurate, and documented content about Shia and Shiism on the internet. At that time, Wikipedia existed and was thriving. But, due to the unchangeable policies in Wikipedia, authentic Shiism could not operate in it, and due to the very gap in Wikipedia in the field of introducing Shia and Shiism to the world, it was necessary to establish a new platform based on media wiki, and thus WikiShia was born. The website was officially inaugurated in 2014 with the presence of the then-president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The encyclopedia tries to be a reliable reference about the AhlulBayt (a.s.) school for all those who are looking for documented, reliable, and authentic information about the topic.
ABNA: Even though various religious encyclopedias were operating, why was it necessary to launch WikiShia?
Amini: At the time WikiShia was established, there were not many active encyclopedias in the humanities, and they mostly appeared in recent years, especially since 2021. At that time, there was the “Islam Quest” website, which worked well in answering questions and doubts. There was also Wikifeqh, which at that time just sought to upload resources without doing any research on the text. Thus, WikiShia was launched to be a reliable source. In Wikipedia, anyone can edit or translate, while the person who edits or translates is anonymous. Therefore, many non-scientific materials are available on Wikipedia, and the very unreliability of Wikipedia content has made it forbidden to refer to it in scientific articles, dissertations, and theses.
ABNA: What is the reason for the success of WikiShia in attracting the audience, from experts to the general public?
Amini: Our objective in WikiShia is to attract the general audience and to achieve this goal, we use expressions and concepts in writing encyclopedia entries that can be understood even by a high school student, with his or her certain religious information at that age. On the other hand, experts can also use WikiShia, because the content included in it has sources and reference capability. There have been many cases where religious speakers have used material available in the WikiShia as a source in their speeches.
WikiShia’s ability to be used by the general public and the comprehensibility of its contents for the public make the encyclopedia thrive. The encyclopedia has not narrowed its audience to experts but has considered the general public, with moderate to low religious knowledge, as its target audience. This procedure is followed not only in Persian service but also in other WikiShia languages. To measure the level of compliance with the matter, for instance, in the Indonesian language, some staff members with little knowledge of Islamic and Shia issues, are assigned to read WikiShia articles and report the cases that are incomprehensible or need more explanation in the texts of the articles so that these things can be solved, and the articles included in the Indonesian service can be used by the general audience as much as possible.
ABNA: How is the writing style on religious issues in WikiShia different from Wikipedia?
Amini: WikiShia’s policies are similar to Wikipedia in some, but different in many respects. For example, in the WikiShia, the policy of impartiality, non-partisanship, and non-use of titles is observed. Nevertheless, titles are used for AhlulBayt (a.s.) in the WikiShia. While this is not the case in Wikipedia. Another thing is that in the WikiShia the term “martyrdom” is used for the demise of the AhlulBayt (a.s.). In the inception of WikiShia, there were a few cases of indiscretion in this field, which were resolved by forming a policy council in WikiShia and planning in this regard.
To comply with the policy of impartiality in WikiShia, it has been tried that if a concept or person has critics, their opinions are also mentioned. There is also some consideration in the use of titles in the WikiShia, and this is due to the policy prohibiting the use of titles in the encyclopedia. Also, to avoid prejudgment in WikiShia, titles are generally not used for people in articles.
Despite the observance of the policy of impartiality in WikiShia, which has led to the trust of the audience in the encyclopedia, there are good articles about the Islamic Revolution and Shia teachings in WikiShia. When a famous point of view is quoted in WikiShia, some unpopular opinions from others are expressed in its following, so that the audience’s trust is maintained, and they know that in the encyclopedia, we do not look at issues one-sidedly. Of course, the opinion of prominent Shiite scholars is highlighted in WikiShia articles.
ABNA: How did WikiShia activity increase in other languages?
Amini: Since its inception, it was intended that the Persian section of WikiShia focus on content creation and that the content created in this section be transferred to other languages. The first generation of foreign languages added to WikiShia were Arabic, English, Urdu, Indonesian, and Turkish. Then, German, French, and Russian were added to WikiShia, which are known as the second-generation languages of the encyclopedia. Last year, 12 languages were launched as the third generation of encyclopedia languages, including Chinese, Hindi, Swahili, Hausa, and Burmese.
Currently, WikiShia operates in 22 languages, of which Persian is considered the mother language, and the content is created in this language. For example, writing an article related to AhlulBayt (a.s.) in the Persian language, depending on its importance, may take from one day or even up to 4 months. To present these contents to the audience, whether Shiite or non-Shiite Muslims and even to non-Muslim audiences, emphasis is placed on localization and compilation by native speakers of foreign languages of WikiShia. That is, the content of Persian articles will be increased or decreased according to the audience of a certain language. For example, the entry related to Tehran’s Friday prayer in Persian, due to its low importance in the Hausa language, may be deleted or replaced with materials appropriate to linguistic geography. For example, for the entry of Eid al-Fitr in the Indonesian language, its entry content in Persian is localized, and instead of the customs of Iran’s Eid al-Fitr, the customs of Indonesia are written in the entry, and in other words, the content is localized.
In WikiShia, machine translation or literal translation in general is prohibited. We do not claim that the translations in WikiShia are perfect. But I must say that encyclopedia translations are monitored. That is, the translation is done by one person and then revised by one or two other people. After this stage, articles about certain subjects are reviewed once again on occasion. By using the experiences gained over the years, the native authoring has been strengthened in the languages of the WikiShia encyclopedia. Now it is trying to compile the entries in the Persian language globally, so that there is less needed to remove the content in the translation from Persian to other languages, to avoid Iranianized compilation. We hope that this problem will be solved as soon as possible with the arrival of new authors who are proficient in the international space.
ABNA: In WikiShia, is content created in other languages apart from Persian?
Amini: Considering the limited resources and manpower during the last decade, we decided that the research and content creation will be done mainly in the Persian language. The creation of content in non-Persian languages is very less, and very little is done in Urdu, Arabic, Hindi, and Indonesian languages, in the context of issues related to their region. Creating content in other languages is ideal. But the conditions are not ready for this now, and the employees of other WikiShia languages are translating the articles published in the Persian language of the encyclopedia.
I always tell WikiShia translators to assume that this is not an encyclopedia and that there is no text to translate. “Read the text and present what you understand in the language of your region. That is, if an article in Persian is 10 pages, and only two pages of that article are useful for your region, change it.”
ABNA: Why did WikiShia encyclopedia start operating in non-Persian languages?
Amini: Our policy in Arabic and English WikiShia has been to have all the articles available in Persian in these two sections, which are moving in this direction. Since more than a year ago, we have hired people whose native languages are Arabic and English in these two sections, so that the texts in these two languages are written exactly like the writing of those regions.
To establish a new language in WikiShia, in a scoring system we have considered the number 22 as a criterion, and we started the activity in each language that got the most points based on the criteria. Our focus in WikiShia has been on languages that have a larger audience.
The expansion of the WikiShia activity to more languages did not neglect us to raise the quality of the activity, and now all encyclopedic languages are alive. However, the activity in some languages is slow due to the lack of human resources. We look at each of the WikiShia languages as an independent project and we have a separate planning for each of them. We have tried to produce all the entries that the audience needs in each of the languages in the same language. A particular language may require a thousand entries, while another may require ten thousand entries.
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