Combining Information from Multiple Internet Sources

In this game components are as follows: players are agents, possible moves are change or
keep the URL; payoffs for those moves are defined as a 2x2 matrix. Each agent is assigned two
values: one for the keeping the aforementioned URL and one for changing the selected URL. Those
values may or may not change each round of the game, depending on the previous round outcome.
At the beginning of the process, the results obtained by Manager Agent from Search Agents
are filtered, ranked and updated according to the algorithm from section 3.4.1. The URL ranking
represents how the agents are confident about a certain URL. From this point the game starts.
The game proceeds as follows. In each round there are two agents selected. Those two
agents are those, which were assigned the result set with the highest ranked URLs. The highest
ranked URL is found as follows: if there is an URL which has, for instance, rank equal to 20 and
there are no URLs with higher rank (taking into account all result sets) then this is a highest ranked
URL. After first agent is found we search for the second agent which has the second highest ranked
URL, but this time omitting the result set which is assigned to previously selected agent. Selected
agents present their highest ranked URLs and have two possibilities: either to keep their answer or
to change it. If the keep action has higher value than the change action, the agent will be assigned
the action to keep its URL for the next round. If, however, the agent is assigned the action to change
its URL and the second agent is assigned the action to keep its URL, the latter is considered a
winner of the round and the former is considered to be the loser – it and its result set are discarded
from further considerations. Then the next round starts (without the agent, which was removed in
previous round - that implies removing the result set assigned to it) and so on, until there is only one
agent with his assigned URL. After that the game is restarted – every agent takes part in the
negotiation process once more, however the URL that was selected as the winning in previous
negotiation is removed from the further consideration from all result sets. Negotiation is performed
in the same manner – round by round agents are removed – but this time they play without the URL
that was selected in the previous “big” round. Process of game restarting continues until there are
10 URLs selected. That is; there are 10 “big” rounds; each being a separate negotiation of one URL;
resulting in 10 URLs being selected and ordered.
The following listing presents one “small” round of negotiation process. That is the
negotiation between two agents. This example presents calculations which are performed during
each round of negotiation process, and what the possible outcomes of the algorithm are; when
approaching this particular situation.
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