[html5] Distinguish main article from comments

[Markus Ernst]

Hello

I follow the discussion on the <main> element in the WHATWG mailing list 
and understand Ian's statements the way that everything not marked up as 
<header>, <footer>, <nav> or <aside> is to be considered as main 
content. Also, Steve Faulkner's spec draft seems to state that 
everything which is not repeated across the pages of a site is 
considered to be main content.

Now, there are some types of webpages with a main article, and user 
comments; these are very common at news websites and blogs. I think it 
would be useful to mark up the main article specifically in order to 
give it a higher weight in search engines than the user contributed 
comments. Also, Screen readers may want to inform the user that the main 
article ends. But an <aside> seems to pull the comments too much apart 
from the main article, as they are significantly more related to it than 
e.g. advertisements.

Is this distinction covered by the current spec? Or, would it be a use 
case for <main>?

(I hope this post is appropriate in this list - it seemed too non-expert 
to me to be posted to the WHATWG list.)