[html5] Distinguish main article from comments

[Ian Hickson]

On Fri, 23 Nov 2012, Vahagn wrote:
>
> As far as I understand, the "article" tag is for marking up 
> self-contained pieces of content. In other words, content that can be 
> taken out of context and distributed / reproduced elsewhere as a 
> separate unit, with no loss of meaning.
> 
> Wrapping each comment into it's own "article" tag seem to be wrong for 
> that reason. A comment, taken out of the context of the article and 
> other comments, would not represent a meaningful, self-contained piece 
> of content.

There's really no distinction between an article and a comment on an 
article. Both need context to be fully understood (e.g. at a minimum, they 
need the reader to understand the language in which they are written).

Reddit provides a great example of this, with each comment having its own 
full URL, and the r/bestof subreddit being an example of individual 
comments being elevated straight to the level of article.

In this day and age, articles are often less meaningful, and even less 
self-contained, than some of their comments. It's either a sad indictment 
of the quality of modern journalism, or a great indication of the rise of 
equality in society.


> Here's how I'd mark up the example above:
> 
> > <article>
> >   <h1>Cicero dictos est</h1>
> >   <p>
> >     Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur
> >     adipisicing elit,
> >     sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut
> >     labore et dolore magna aliqua....
> >   </p>
> >   <section>
> >     <h1>comments</h1>
> >
> >       <h2>bonus est</h2>
> >       <p>great article;
> >        your Latin is excellent!</p>
> >
> >       <h2>malus est</h2>
> >       <p>terrible article;
> >        you misspelled "dictus", you moron</p>
> >
> >   </section>
> > </article>
> 
> Less markup, too.

That's not wrong, for sure.

However, per the spec, using <article> for those comments (holding the h2 
and the p in each case) would not be wrong either.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
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Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'