Getting to the source

Abstract

We ask what kinds of sources Wikipedians value most and compare Wikipedia's stated policy on sources to what we observe in practice. We find that primary data sources developed by alternative publishers are both popular and persistent, despite policies that present such sources as inferior to scholarly secondary sources. We also find that Wikipedians make almost equal use of information produced by associations such as nonprofits as from scholarly publishers, with a significant portion coming from government information sources. Our findings suggest the rise of new influential sources of information on the Web but also reinforce the traditional geographic patterns of scholarly publication. This has a significant effect on the goal of Wikipedians to represent "the sum of all human knowledge."

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