The first one does, I think. The second one doesn't... oh well. There are quite a few questions that google can parse, though. The first one uses google's semantic fact finding feature, the second one uses its calculator feature (which has lots of constants in it, including astronomical values).

Mathias Schindler wrote: So Google has basically created a database of all Wikipedia's infoboxes, and is serving up entries from them as search results on its website? Does this count as mirroring our content? Are they in compliance with whatever rules apply to whatever it is they're doing? Aside from that, something concerns me here. These snippets are displayed right at the top of search pages, above the search results, even when the Wikipedia article itself is nowhere near the top search result. In other words, anyone who manages to sneak the right value in at the critical moment when Google is re-indexing the page can achieve an effect similar to a [[Googlebomb]], but even more powerful. How long before people start craftily changing infobox labels and values in an attempt to abuse this? *blocks self for WP:BEANS violation* -Gurch

Anthony wrote: I was thinking more about the restrictions we impose on mirror sites (including but not limited to the GFDL), but I accept your point that facts aren't copyrightable. Whether a collection of Wikipedia infoboxes can be equated with a collection of facts is another matter, though; if that was true, surely it could be argued that the rest of the article is also no more than a collection of facts, and hence not subject to copyright? -Gurch

On 1/3/07, Gurch <matthew.britton(a)btinternet.com> wrote: The GFDL is only enforcible to the extent of copyright law. Not sure what other restrictions you're talking about. Trademark law doesn't seem to apply here either, though. An encyclopedia article is more than just a collection of facts. Those facts are arranged in a particular manner, and expressed in a particular way. If you could somehow reduce the encyclopedia article to the raw facts, and then re-express them in your own words and in a random order, then you *might* be able to escape the copyright of the original. Of course even then, collections of facts are themselves copyrightable *as a collection*, to the extent that the selection of which facts to present is creative. So an encyclopedia article is almost surely copyrightable, whereas a single fact from an encyclopedia article is almost surely not. In between, is where lawyers make their money. All of this is completely US-centric, of course. I can't imagine a jurisdiction where what Google is doing would actually result in a copyright infringement lawsuit, but there are some pretty strange laws out there. Anthony

Mathias Schindler wrote: How would I go about doing that? Also, when you say "back to life", are you suggesting it is somehow "dead"? I was under the impression the devs were planning to implement stable versions properly as soon as they finished single login.

It's tagged using the semantics of the English language. The idea behind the "semantic web" is that we tag facts using a system easier to parse (for a computer) than English, but if google can parse English (in this limited context), then good for them.