> Would it be useful to indicate that adherence to Style is different than the Protocol or Best Practices guides?

I don't think that's necessarily what we want. I think the high-level guidelines we have on the style guide can apply to all the guides. Just made that change in 5273cc8. Let me know what you think.

> I've started interpreting these as "Style should be adhered to, Protocol/Best Practices are suggestions". Unclear if this is the general perspective.

I think they're all guidelines. We can save ourselves some low-level decision-making by following them. As the high-level guidelines say, "Don't violate a guideline without a good reason."

One issue that might cause confusion is that some of the best practice guidelines can be at odds with each other:

> Prefer small objects with a single, well-defined responsibility.
> [Tell, don't ask](http://goo.gl/Ztawt).

Maybe we remove them from the guides and let Ruby Science deal with their nuances?