HTML5 seems to be very publisher centric with it’s “article”, “sections”, and “aside” tags. It does not appear to have fully thought through an actual human interaction with the “article” or the other humans and their interactions.

With HTML5, Is there any means for keeping track of an entire conversation and it’s divergences (threads)?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Internet_forum_software

One (semantically and practically) sensible way of describing a dialog would be something like:
<dialog>
<turn>
<author>Bob</author><discourse>Hi</discourse>
</turn>
<turn>
<author>Mary</author><discourse>Hello Bob.</discourse>
</turn>
…
</dialog>

@John Holdun: True, but their story is still tragic!

@Arlo: The short answer is no, <dialog> is not suitable for comments. Long reasoning:

1. An article and its comments are not necessarily a dialogue. Many comments are likely to be simple statements that do not interact intimately with the contents of the article or other comments, thus initiating no conversation. Many articles are also unlikely to be for the purpose of generating discussion, but are written to make a point or document an experience. They are closer to a monologue than a dialogue. If they did provoke discussion, you can’t place the article within a <dialog> without losing the use of more appropriate tags like <article>.

2. If you consider comments with threading, you can’t nest dialogs within each other. The only two elements that can be immediate children of <dialog> are <dt> and <dd>. You can’t nest a dialog within those two either, since the extended conversation is not a name or something that the top of the thread stated. However, it would be acceptable if it was similar to the Twitter example, where I have removed the thread from everything else surrounding it (i.e. other unconnected tweets, or replies to other people’s replies).

The specification recommends articles for comments. You can read more about implementing this as part of Bruce’s “Designing a blog with html5” article.

@ysbreker & Bastien: As Bastien said, <dl> has now been redefined as an association list. We’ll cover this further on HTML5Doctor at some point in the future. Within <dialog> , <dt> and <dd> are interpreted as “name of speaker” and “discourse” (or “quote”). If it helps you can think of <dt> and <dd> as “Dialog Talker” and “Dialog Discourse”, respectively.

@Bruce Lawson: I agree, <blockquote> and <cite> would be more appropriate had <cite> not been redefined. That is a very interesting article on the subject, one that anyone else reading this article should take a look at.

@Rachel Nabors: That’s the spirit!

@Florent V. (Wow, That’s quite the response!) and Steven Rossi: As Bruce said, before it was redefined it would have been acceptable to use <blockquote> and <cite> to mark-up dialogue. I think the <dialog> tag would have been a useful addition for grouping those two elements, and even though that is not the case the current state is quite similar. Most likely, the use of <dt> and <dd> within <dialog> is for backwards compatibility, since people were previously recommended to use <dl>. I agree with Florent’s comments on <dl>, there are many use cases that <dl> suits but really should have their own element like dialogue has received. I would like to revisit <dl> in an article here, so I’ll keep what you have said in mind and hopefully see you there for more on this

@John Faulds: Aren’t most terms in HTML/CSS in concession to US user (For example, color)? A number of different names were reviewed and I believe the reasoning for not using dialogue was because it might be too confusing.

@Wolf: Ignoring the concept of separating content from presentation, you are right that this can cause problems (though, perhaps not in saying that *most* uses are affected. I would say that most IM applications present the name first, then the discourse). Do you think it would be better if it was up to the developer to pick an order, provided all other tags within the <dialog> followed the same ordering (all dt before dd, or all dd before dt)?