This paper asks the following question: are the popular assumptions about the social interpretations of networks created from the edit history valid? We verify commonly assumed interpretations of four types of networks created from discussions on Wikipedia talk pages, co-edits and reverts in Wikipedia articles, and edits of articles in various topics, by comparing these networks with results from a survey of editors of the Polish Wikipedia community. The results indicate that while the behavioral networks are strongly related to the declarations of respondents, only in one case of the network created from talk pages and interpreted as acquaintance we can observe a near equivalence. The article next describes improved definitions of behavioral indicators obtained through machine learning. The improved networks are much closer to their declarative counterparts.
The main contribution of the article is a validated model of an acquaintance network among Wikipedia editors that can be derived from behavioral data and validly interpreted as acquaintance. Other contributions are improved versions of behavioral networks based on editing behavior and discussion history on the Wikipedia.