I've been working on such a thing here: http://gotoanswer.stanford.edu http://gotoanswer.stanford.edu The hypothesis behind the search engine is that correct

I've been working on such a thing here: http://gotoanswer.stanford.edu http://gotoanswer.stanford.edu The hypothesis behind the search engine is that correct answers will share some of the same tokens in common. For example a search for "mysql error 1045" brings up posts from stackoverflow, linuxquestions, ubuntuforums, and serverfault that all mention an incorrect password. The "best" answer is the one that instructs you on how to reset your password. Other queries you can try are: "linux check hard drive space" "openssl aes" "reset safari 8 on yosemite" "how to remove spilled wine from macbook?" I had concerns as well about whether this type of search engine "steals" content from other sites. I consulted with a few lawyers and their legal consensus was that this fell under fair use since I was a) Only showing a portion (specific posts) from each site and b) Transforming the posts in a novel way (i.e. re-ranking them). The transformative requirement is the #1 factor for fair use: http://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/#the_transformative_factor_the_purpose_and_character_of_your_use http://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/#...