Today, vast amounts of data are collected from the internet, and the general public generates most data using social networks. There is a need to have a comprehensive approach to characterize the quality of such user-generated data collection from the internet. The data quality characteristics accepted among database and computer science communities have definitions that are not domain-specific. Therefore, there is no clear understanding of the data quality characteristics specific to user-generated content. This research examines different user-generated content platforms against the general data quality characteristics to determine which quality characteristics are essential for user-generated content. The research contributes to a list of definitions of those data quality characteristics specific to user-generated content. These definitions help identify quality characteristics useful for user-generated content platforms and their implementations. The quality of the content of Atlas of Living Australia, Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia, and WalkingPaths is evaluated to assess the essence of the quality characteristics defined in this research.