Preferential attachment in the growth of social networks: the case of Wikipedia

@misc{citeulike:1169863, abstract = {We present an analysis of the statistical properties and growth of the free on-line encyclopedia Wikipedia. By describing topics by vertices and hyperlinks between them as edges, we can represent this encyclopedia as a directed graph. The topological properties of this graph are in close analogy with that of the World Wide Web, despite the very different growth mechanism. In particular we measure a scale--invariant distribution of the in-- and out-- degree and we are able to reproduce these features by means of a simple statistical model. As a major consequence, Wikipedia growth can be described by local rules such as the preferential attachment mechanism, though users can act globally on the network.}, author = {Capocci, A. and Servedio, V. D. P. and Colaiori, F. and Buriol, L. S. and Donato, D. and Leonardi, S. and Caldarelli, G. }, citeulike-article-id = {1169863}, eprint = {physics/0602026v1}, keywords = {attachment, networks, preferential, social, wikipedia}, month = {Feb}, posted-at = {2008-04-17 10:27:39}, priority = {2}, title = {Preferential attachment in the growth of social networks: the case of Wikipedia}, url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0602026v1}, year = {2006} }

TY - ELEC ID - citeulike:1169863 L3 - citeulike-article-id:1169863 TI - Preferential attachment in the growth of social networks: the case of Wikipedia N2 - We present an analysis of the statistical properties and growth of the free on-line encyclopedia Wikipedia. By describing topics by vertices and hyperlinks between them as edges, we can represent this encyclopedia as a directed graph. The topological properties of this graph are in close analogy with that of the World Wide Web, despite the very different growth mechanism. In particular we measure a scale--invariant distribution of the in-- and out-- degree and we are able to reproduce these features by means of a simple statistical model. As a major consequence, Wikipedia growth can be described by local rules such as the preferential attachment mechanism, though users can act globally on the network. KW - attachment KW - networks KW - preferential KW - social KW - wikipedia AU - Capocci, A AU - Servedio, VDP AU - Colaiori, F AU - Buriol, LS AU - Donato, D AU - Leonardi, S AU - Caldarelli, G PY - 2006/Feb/27/ UR - http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0602026v1 ER -