The OED supports the notion that a convention is an agreement, implicit or explicit, among a group.  My practice is mine alone, but if all or most of us do it that way (good or bad), it’s a convention, a “coming together” in agreement on this one practice.  “Best practice” specifies what we *ought* to do without regard to whether we do it.  A “standard” is what we have agreed we will in fact do, to some specified level of detail, when we enter that particular game.

Best practice - implies quantitative result in a qualitative direction
Convention - agnostic on both counts and also on any other metric. eg I do something by convention - so it represents my practice, but possibly no one else's.

Fraser Goffin wrote:

I agree. Perhaps it would be better to use the terms 'COMMON practice'

and 'BEST practice' rather than 'convention' (the association seems

more intuitive as does the distinction) ?

Fraser.

2008/7/21 Liam Quin <liam@w...>:

On Sat, Jul 19, 2008 at 01:04:09PM -0400, Costello, Roger L. wrote:

Is a convention the same thing as a best practice?

No, not in general.  Things that are "usually done" or that are

done by most people are not necessarily the best way to do

things or even good things to do.

Liam

--

Liam Quin, W3C XML Activity Lead, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/

http://www.holoweb.net/~liam/ * http://www.fromoldbooks.org/

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