Talk:Preferential attachment

Previously the "Preferential attachment" page was a simple redirect to the BA model. But since the preferential attachment process has been around (under other names) for many decades before the BA model, and encompasses many models other than the BA model (particularly the 1925 model of Yule, the 1955 model of Simon, and the 1976 model of Price), it seems that there should be somewhere that people can read about these things. Nog33 (talk) 04:50, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm no expert on the matter, so I won't modify the main page, but shouldn't there be a reference to what we call "network effects" in economy on this page? Seems it explains a fairly similar mechanism. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.230.144.98 (talk) 05:37, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

This is not an article about cumulative advantage in general

This article is specifically about preferential attachment, which is a specific case of the Matthew effect or cumulative advantage in network analysis. The article does not discuss the older concept of the Matthew effect and cumulative advantage, and nor is "preferential attachment" a good name for cumulative advantage more generally. For the latter reason, I would recommend moving any material here not specifically referring to the modern concept of preferential attachment to the Matthew effect article, which is the most common name for cumulative advantage more generally in the literature. Alec Gargett (talk) 02:28, 29 April 2025 (UTC)