Contract Net em Sistemas Colaborativos: uma aplicação na Wikipédia

Abstract

Wikipedia is a collaborative system that has its content provided by their own users (Wikipedia, 2011). It was widely criticized for the lack of reliability of the information it contains. Faced with this problem we developed a Multi-Agent System (SMA), using the Opal framework, that simulates the adoption of the Contract Net protocol for coordination and uses the concept of reputation to coordinate the activities of Wikipedia’s information providers, and thus improve the reliability of the information contained therein. The SMA developed simulates people interacting and providing content for Wikipedia autonomously. For that it was identified Wikipedia’s user profiles in real situations. The coordination of these agents was performed by introducing the concept of Reputation in Contract Net coordination protocol, thereby allowing the implementation of the social order in the system. The use of the reputation concept can identify agents who are not following the rules of the system, and thus agents who act to unbalance the system will be isolated and naturally cease to interact with others or change behavior. To isolate these agents they can no longer review content and, therefore, the information contained in the system will become more reliable.