Re: I've built www.vocabs.org - A community driven website that allows you to build RDF vocabularies

On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 12:42 PM, Luca Matteis <lmatteis@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Melvin,
>
> Thanks for your feedback. CORS could actually be implemented, but this is
> really only useful if you're wanting to request data using browser-side
> JavaScript. So its application is rather limited, and not a high-priority
> feature imho.
>
> Regarding HTTPS, we're not dealing with highly sensitive material so I
> truly think it's kind of redundant. The data that is transferred is Open
> Data, therefore a MITM attacker would simply gain access to information
> that is already open.
>

The point of MITM isn't only information disclosure, but in the case of
open data such as vocabularies to intercept and alter the data being
transferred over the wire, which can be potentially damaging effects on the
consumer requesting the data. Imagine for example a system making decision
based on open vocabularies, and getting fooled by someone performing MITM
attack. For example changing the domain/range of properties and impacting
reasoning on the consumer end.

Steph.


>
> Hope this may have cleared things. But CORS is definitely on my list of
> things to consider implementing :)
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 6:16 PM, Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com
> > wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 14 February 2013 17:46, Luca Matteis <lmatteis@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>> It's my first time here, but I've been attracted to the Linked data
>>> initiative for quite a while now. A couple of weeks ago I needed to build
>>> my first RDF vocabulary.. I cannot tell you how hard this process was for
>>> an RDF newbie as myself. I had to read a couple of books, and read a lot
>>> all over the web before I could get a grasp of it all.
>>>
>>> Even after understanding the linked-data context, and how the
>>> technologies involved worked, I was still left with a set of tools that I
>>> thought were pretty limited. I had to download apps, that did or didn't
>>> work. And learn various different programming APIs to generate the RDF that
>>> I wanted. I can only imagine the difficulty a non-techie person would have
>>> when trying to build a vocabulary.
>>>
>>> Another issue that I confronted when looking for existing vocabularies,
>>> was that most of the time they were created by a single entity (a group of
>>> people) that knows about the lexicon of the subject. I think this is quite
>>> limited as well. A vocabulary should be open and agreed upon a group of
>>> people. It should be community-driven. It should be crowd-sourced and
>>> validated, the same way correct answers are validated on Stackoverflow.
>>>
>>> So in a couple of days I built http://www.vocabs.org/ that does exactly
>>> this. It allows people, with very little technical experience, to start
>>> creating vocabularies (entirely through the web-interface). Not only that,
>>> but different users can then join and comment, and add new vocabulary
>>> terms. An example of this: http://www.vocabs.org/term/WineOntology(*hint* click "download" at the top).
>>>
>>> I was just wondering what the Semantic community thinks of this idea. I
>>> hope it's clear what I'm trying to achieve here, but maybe a better
>>> explanation would be here: http://www.vocabs.org/about
>>>
>>
>> Looks great
>>
>> Two features we are lacking in some of the existing vocabs are
>>
>> - CORS enabled (I think even dublin core doesnt have this turned on yet)
>> - HTTPS which can be useful for things like payments to prevent MITM
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> Thanks!
>>>
>>
>>
>


-- 
Steph.