The difference between a "best practice" and a "guideline"

Team,

As you might recall, in the last face-to-face meeting, there was some minor
debate as to whether or not we should call the Deployment Guide "LDP Best
Practices and Guidelines" or just "LDP Best Practices".

I think we all realized that the terms seem sort of redundant, but there
was a "gut" feeling that a distinction needed to be made. In thinking about
it more carefully, I do indeed think the distinction is going to be useful,
providing that it is clarified.

As such, I have created a section in the new version of the guide, which I
think is helpful. I welcome your review and approval (+1) of this verbiage,
or comments.
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1.2 Terminology

For the purposes of this document, we have found it useful to make a minor,
yet important distinction between the term 'best practice' and the term
'guideline'. For the purposes of this document, we define and differentiate
the terms as such:
*best practice* A good implementation practice (method or technique) that
has consistently shown results superior to those achieved with other means
and that is used as a benchmark. Best practices within this document apply
specifically to the ways that one should implement technology (i.e. LDP
servers, clients, and related systems). In this document, the best
practices might be used as a kind of check-list against which one can
directly evaluate a system's design and code. Lack of adherence to any
given best practice, however, does not necessarily imply a lack of quality;
they are recommendations that are said to be 'best' in most cases and in
most contexts, but not all. A best practice is always subject to
improvement as we learn and evolve the Web together. *guideline*A tip, a
trick, a note, a suggestion, or answer to a frequently asked question.
Guidelines within this document provide useful information that can advance
your knowledge and understanding and help you achieve a result, but that
may not be directly applicable to your implementation or recognized by
consensus as the 'best' method or technique.

Please see the Linked Data Glossary <http://www.w3.org/TR/ld-glossary/> for
definitions to a variety of terms related to the Linked Data sphere of
knowledge.

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I have also added the following Guideline, which provides an example of the
difference and is also open for your review and approval (+1) or comments:


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3. Guidelines 3.1 Containers are not limited to same-subject,
same-predicate triples

The LDP specification defines a Container as "a Linked Data Platform
Resource (LDPR) representing a collection of same-subject, same-predicate
triples." This can easily be misconstrued to mean that a Container should *
only* contain same-subject, same-predicate triples. While Containers
*may*contain only same-subject, same-predicate triples (i.e. the
membership
subjects and membership predicates of its membership triples), it is free
to contain others. The definition is meant to clarify only those attributes
that are directly relavant to the interaction model of a Container, but not
to limit them to those attributes alone.

It is important to remember that a Linked Data Platform Container (LDPC) is
also a Linked Data Platform Resource (LDPR) and though it might exist as a
membership controller, it may also represent additional data that is
valuable to the agents that access it.
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-- 
Cody Burleson