Is it acceptable to heavily reference blogs, forums, and other informal media? I am pursuing a specific research question. I have thoroughly surveyed existing research on the topic, and found dozens of researchers working on the problem, but was disappointed by their work. Their research:


Does not consider the full magnitude of the problem.
Constantly tests old, insufficient methods.
Overlooks significant details, so the test results are meaningless.
Lacks innovation.


I found lots of interesting ideas posted around the Internet. In blogs, forums, and USENET, I found people with some clever new ideas to approach the problem. These people had a genuine stake in the problem, so I found their ideas actually brought the problem somewhere meaningful. These informally-posted ideas need testing and considerable refinement. They are far from perfect, but many times better than what the academics are dealing with.

I would like to prepare some trials and publish some papers, centered around a number of these ideas. It is only fair that I give credit to the authors of those ideas. Essentially, I need to give credit to lots of anonymous people who posted their ideas informally.  I have never read an academic paper containing highly informal references. Can I include references like this in my paper?

MutantTurtle17. “My Amazing DIY Tin-can Refugee Shelter.” MyBlog. 2014.
    Retrieved from http://...

SimCityFan2012. “RE: RE: Look at this!” Shelter Designs Forum. 2013.
    Retrieved from http://...
Does your paper really test &amp; verify lots of ideas?

You state that "I would like to prepare some trials and publish some papers, centered around a number of these ideas."  How many of those ideas do you expect to actually implement per a single paper?

If you implement, evaluate and contrast three novel ideas from blogs&amp;forums, preferably including a solid comparison against a baseline published method; then that's just three informal items that you need to cite, in addition to the current academic publications.

There are references and references

If your paper assumes something, or claims non-obvious things, then you need 'proof' of it outside of your paper that should come from references. Those references need to be trustworthy - preferably respectable peer reviewed publications.

However, if your paper uses references for giving credit to ideas or pointing to original sources, then that's an entirely different class of reference, where blogs and forums are just as acceptable as, say, referencing archives of private informal letters that are used in studies of literature or history.  

If you have never read an academic paper with a lot of informal references, then it is because it is very dependent on the field you're studying - for example, a thesis about racial stereotypes in online media would reference many informal sources as examples; while a thesis about particle physics wouldn't have any.