{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,2,28]],"date-time":"2026-02-28T04:26:40Z","timestamp":1772252800303,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":44,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"5","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2020,5,13]],"date-time":"2020-05-13T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1589328000000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Information"],"abstract":"<jats:p>One of the most important factors impacting quality of content in Wikipedia is presence of reliable sources. By following references, readers can verify facts or find more details about described topic. A Wikipedia article can be edited independently in any of over 300 languages, even by anonymous users, therefore information about the same topic may be inconsistent. This also applies to use of references in different language versions of a particular article, so the same statement can have different sources. In this paper we analyzed over 40 million articles from the 55 most developed language versions of Wikipedia to extract information about over 200 million references and find the most popular and reliable sources. We presented 10 models for the assessment of the popularity and reliability of the sources based on analysis of meta information about the references in Wikipedia articles, page views and authors of the articles. Using DBpedia and Wikidata we automatically identified the alignment of the sources to a specific domain. Additionally, we analyzed the changes of popularity and reliability in time and identified growth leaders in each of the considered months. The results can be used for quality improvements of the content in different languages versions of Wikipedia.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/info11050263","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2020,5,14]],"date-time":"2020-05-14T02:55:41Z","timestamp":1589424941000},"page":"263","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":17,"title":["Modeling Popularity and Reliability of Sources in Multilingual Wikipedia"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"11","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0163-5492","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"W\u0142odzimierz","family":"Lewoniewski","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Information Systems, Pozna\u0144 University of Economics and Business, 61-875 Pozna\u0144, Poland"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-5641-3160","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Krzysztof","family":"W\u0119cel","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Information Systems, Pozna\u0144 University of Economics and Business, 61-875 Pozna\u0144, Poland"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-5464-9698","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Witold","family":"Abramowicz","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Information Systems, Pozna\u0144 University of Economics and Business, 61-875 Pozna\u0144, Poland"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2020,5,13]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","unstructured":"Wikipedia Meta-Wiki (2020, March 30). List of Wikipedias. Available online: https:\/\/meta.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_Wikipedias."},{"key":"ref_2","unstructured":"English Wikipedia (2020, March 30). Reliable Sources. Available online: https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources."},{"key":"ref_3","unstructured":"Internet Live Stats (2020, March 30). Total Number of Websites. Available online: https:\/\/www.internetlivestats.com\/total-number-of-websites\/."},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2691","DOI":"10.1001\/jama.287.20.2691","article-title":"Empirical studies assessing the quality of health information for consumers on the world wide web: A systematic review","volume":"287","author":"Eysenbach","year":"2002","journal-title":"JAMA"},{"key":"ref_5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Price, R., and Shanks, G. (2016). A semiotic information quality framework: Development and comparative analysis. Enacting Research Methods in Information Systems, Springer.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-319-29272-4_7"},{"key":"ref_6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"777","DOI":"10.25300\/MISQ\/2013\/37.3.05","article-title":"Integrating service quality with system and information quality: An empirical test in the e-service context","volume":"37","author":"Xu","year":"2013","journal-title":"MIS Q."},{"key":"ref_7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Nielsen, F.\u00c5. (2007). Scientific citations in Wikipedia. arXiv.","DOI":"10.5210\/fm.v12i8.1997"},{"key":"ref_8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Lewoniewski, W., W\u0119cel, K., and Abramowicz, W. (2017, January 12\u201314). Analysis of references across Wikipedia languages. Proceedings of the International Conference on Information and Software Technologies, Druskininkai, Lithuania.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-319-67642-5_47"},{"key":"ref_9","unstructured":"Characterizing Wikipedia Citation Usage (2020, February 29). Analyzing Reading Sessions. Available online: https:\/\/meta.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/Research:Characterizing_Wikipedia_Citation_Usage\/Analyzing_Reading_Sessions."},{"key":"ref_10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"e11429","DOI":"10.2196\/11429","article-title":"The most influential medical journals according to Wikipedia: Quantitative analysis","volume":"21","author":"Jemielniak","year":"2019","journal-title":"J. Med. Internet Res."},{"key":"ref_11","first-page":"442","article-title":"Assessing information quality of a community-based encyclopedia","volume":"5","author":"Stvilia","year":"2005","journal-title":"Proc. ICIQ"},{"key":"ref_12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Blumenstock, J.E. (2008, January 21\u201325). Size matters: Word count as a measure of quality on Wikipedia. Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on World Wide Web, Beijing, China.","DOI":"10.1145\/1367497.1367673"},{"key":"ref_13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Lucassen, T., and Schraagen, J.M. (2010, January 27). Trust in wikipedia: How users trust information from an unknown source. Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Information Credibility, Raleigh, NC, USA.","DOI":"10.1145\/1772938.1772944"},{"key":"ref_14","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"487","DOI":"10.1177\/0165551511416065","article-title":"Information quality assessment of community generated content: A user study of Wikipedia","volume":"37","author":"Yaari","year":"2011","journal-title":"J. Inf. Sci."},{"key":"ref_15","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Conti, R., Marzini, E., Spognardi, A., Matteucci, I., Mori, P., and Petrocchi, M. (2014, January 27\u201329). Maturity assessment of Wikipedia medical articles. Proceedings of the 2014 IEEE 27th International Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems (CBMS), New York, NY, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/CBMS.2014.69"},{"key":"ref_16","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Piccardi, T., Redi, M., Colavizza, G., and West, R. (2020). Quantifying Engagement with Citations on Wikipedia. arXiv.","DOI":"10.1145\/3366423.3380300"},{"key":"ref_17","unstructured":"Nielsen, F.\u00c5., Mietchen, D., and Willighagen, E. (June, January 28). Scholia, scientometrics and wikidata. Proceedings of the European Semantic Web Conference, Portoro\u017e, Slovenia."},{"key":"ref_18","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2116","DOI":"10.1002\/asi.23687","article-title":"Amplifying the impact of open access: Wikipedia and the diffusion of science","volume":"68","author":"Teplitskiy","year":"2017","journal-title":"J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol."},{"key":"ref_19","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Fetahu, B., Markert, K., Nejdl, W., and Anand, A. (2016, January 24\u201328). Finding news citations for wikipedia. Proceedings of the 25th ACM International on Conference on Information and Knowledge Management, Indianapolis, IN, USA.","DOI":"10.1145\/2983323.2983808"},{"key":"ref_20","unstructured":"Ferschke, O., Gurevych, I., and Rittberger, M. (2012, January 17\u201320). FlawFinder: A Modular System for Predicting Quality Flaws in Wikipedia. Proceedings of the CLEF (Online Working Notes\/Labs\/Workshop), Rome, Italy."},{"key":"ref_21","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Flekova, L., Ferschke, O., and Gurevych, I. (2014, January 7\u201311). What makes a good biography?: Multidimensional quality analysis based on wikipedia article feedback data. Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on World Wide Web, Seoul, Korea.","DOI":"10.1145\/2566486.2567972"},{"key":"ref_22","unstructured":"Shen, A., Qi, J., and Baldwin, T. (2017, January 6\u20138). A Hybrid Model for Quality Assessment of Wikipedia Articles. Proceedings of the Australasian Language Technology Association Workshop, Brisbane, Australia."},{"key":"ref_23","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Di Sciascio, C., Strohmaier, D., Errecalde, M., and Veas, E. (2017, January 13\u201316). WikiLyzer: Interactive information quality assessment in Wikipedia. Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces, Limassol, Cyprus.","DOI":"10.1145\/3025171.3025201"},{"key":"ref_24","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Dang, Q.V., and Ignat, C.L. (November, January 31). Measuring Quality of Collaboratively Edited Documents: The Case of Wikipedia. Proceedings of the 2016 IEEE 2nd International Conference on Collaboration and Internet Computing (CIC), Pittsburgh, PA, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/CIC.2016.044"},{"key":"ref_25","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Lewoniewski, W., W\u0119cel, K., and Abramowicz, W. (2017). Relative Quality and Popularity Evaluation of Multilingual Wikipedia Articles. Informatics, 4.","DOI":"10.20944\/preprints201709.0130.v1"},{"key":"ref_26","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Lewoniewski, W., W\u0119cel, K., and Abramowicz, W. (2019). Multilingual Ranking of Wikipedia Articles with Quality and Popularity Assessment in Different Topics. Computers, 8.","DOI":"10.20944\/preprints201905.0144.v2"},{"key":"ref_27","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Warncke-wang, M., Cosley, D., and Riedl, J. (2013, January 5\u20137). Tell Me More: An Actionable Quality Model for Wikipedia. Proceedings of the WikiSym 2013, Hong Kong, China.","DOI":"10.1145\/2491055.2491063"},{"key":"ref_28","unstructured":"Lih, A. (2004, January 16\u201317). Wikipedia as Participatory Journalism: Reliable Sources? Metrics for evaluating collaborative media as a news resource. Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Online Journalism, Austin, TX, USA."},{"key":"ref_29","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"80","DOI":"10.1016\/j.datak.2018.02.004","article-title":"Using big data and network analysis to understand Wikipedia article quality","volume":"115","author":"Liu","year":"2018","journal-title":"Data Knowl. Eng."},{"key":"ref_30","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Wilkinson, D.M., and Huberman, B.A. (2007, January 21\u201323). Cooperation and quality in wikipedia. Proceedings of the 2007 International Symposium on Wikis WikiSym 07, Montreal, QC, Canada.","DOI":"10.1145\/1296951.1296968"},{"key":"ref_31","first-page":"4","article-title":"A multimethod study of information quality in wiki collaboration","volume":"2","author":"Kane","year":"2011","journal-title":"ACM Trans. Manag. Inf. Syst. (TMIS)"},{"key":"ref_32","unstructured":"WikiTop (2020, March 30). Wikipedians Top. Available online: http:\/\/wikitop.org\/."},{"key":"ref_33","unstructured":"Lewoniewski, W. (2018). The Method of Comparing and Enriching Information in Multlingual Wikis Based on the Analysis of Their Quality. [Ph.D. Thesis, Pozna\u0144 University of Economics and Business]."},{"key":"ref_34","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Lerner, J., and Lomi, A. (2018). Knowledge categorization affects popularity and quality of Wikipedia articles. PLoS ONE, 13.","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pone.0190674"},{"key":"ref_35","unstructured":"Wikimedia Downloads (2020, March 30). English Wikipedia Latest Database Backup Dumps. Available online: https:\/\/dumps.wikimedia.org\/enwiki\/latest\/."},{"key":"ref_36","unstructured":"English Wikipedia (2020, March 30). 2019\u20132020 Coronavirus Pandemic. Available online: https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_pandemic."},{"key":"ref_37","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"78","DOI":"10.1145\/2629489","article-title":"Wikidata: A free collaborative knowledgebase","volume":"57","year":"2014","journal-title":"Commun. ACM"},{"key":"ref_38","unstructured":"(2020, April 23). Wikidata. Available online: https:\/\/www.wikidata.org\/wiki\/Wikidata:Main_Page."},{"key":"ref_39","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Aberer, K., Choi, K.S., Noy, N., Allemang, D., Lee, K.I., Nixon, L., Golbeck, J., Mika, P., Maynard, D., and Mizoguchi, R. (2007). DBpedia: A Nucleus for a Web of Open Data. The Semantic Web, Springer.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-540-76298-0"},{"key":"ref_40","unstructured":"(2020, April 23). DBpedia. Available online: https:\/\/wiki.dbpedia.org\/."},{"key":"ref_41","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Frey, J., Hofer, M., Obraczka, D., Lehmann, J., and Hellmann, S. (2019, January 26\u201330). DBpedia FlexiFusion the Best of Wikipedia> Wikidata> Your Data. Proceedings of the International Semantic Web Conference, Auckland, New Zealand.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-030-30796-7_7"},{"key":"ref_42","unstructured":"(2020, April 23). GFS Data Browser. Available online: https:\/\/global.dbpedia.org."},{"key":"ref_43","unstructured":"English Wikipedia (2020, March 30). Perennial Sources. Available online: https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources\/Perennial_sources."},{"key":"ref_44","unstructured":"BestRef (2020, March 30). Popular and Reliable Sources of Wikipedia. Available online: https:\/\/bestref.net."}],"container-title":["Information"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2078-2489\/11\/5\/263\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T09:28:23Z","timestamp":1760174903000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2078-2489\/11\/5\/263"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2020,5,13]]},"references-count":44,"journal-issue":{"issue":"5","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2020,5]]}},"alternative-id":["info11050263"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/info11050263","relation":{"has-preprint":[{"id-type":"doi","id":"10.20944\/preprints202003.0460.v1","asserted-by":"object"}]},"ISSN":["2078-2489"],"issn-type":[{"value":"2078-2489","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2020,5,13]]}}}