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

Here we present experimental data and a model in order to describe the evolution of a socio-technological system. The case of study presented is that of the online free encyclopedia Wikipedia, for which we have the complete series of pages addition during time. The varioius entries and the hyperlinks between them can be described as a graph. We find scale-invariant behaviour in the distribution of the degree and a topology similar to that of the World Wide Web. By using the information on dynamics we are able to model and reproduce the features of this system. We also find that regardless the fact that any user has the possibility of global reshape, still Wikipedia has a growth described by local rules as that of the preferential attachment.