Linked Data Platform Best Practices and Guidelines Note Published
From the post:
The Linked Data Platform (LDP) Working Group has published a Group Note of Linked Data Platform Best Practices and Guidelines. This document provides best practices and guidelines for implementing Linked Data Platform servers and clients. Learn more about the Data Activity.
The document takes pains to distinguish “best practice” from “guidance:”
For the purposes of this document, it is useful to make a minor, yet important distinction between the term ‘best practice’ and the term ‘guideline’. We define and differentiate the terms as follows:
- best practice
- An 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 LDP servers and clients are implemented as well as how certain resources are prepared and used with them. In this document, the best practices might be used as a kind of check-list against which an implementer 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 an implementer’s knowledge and understanding, but that may not be directly applicable to an implementation or recognized by consensus as a ‘best practice’.
Personally I don’t see the distinction as useful but I bring it to your attention in case you are reading or authoring in this space.