Is Comment Meaningless

Determines whether the text of a comment doesn't add anything to the conversation. 😶

Usage

Use the exported isCommentMeaningless function to test whether a string seems to be a definite "+1"-style comment.

npm i is-comment-meaningless

import { isCommentMeaningless } from "is-comment-meaningless";

// "sentiment"
isCommentMeaningless("+1");

// false
isCommentMeaningless("mmh, yes, indeed, a fine point, thank you 🧐");

isCommentMeaningless returns either a string or false:

• false: if the phrase is not known to be a meaningless phrase
• "blank": empty comments or with no real meaning, such as "wut"
• "help": requests for help, such as "any idea?" and "help"
• "sentiment": agreement or emotion without information, such as "+1" and "subscribed"
• "update": requests for an update on the issue, such as "bump" and "any update?"

How It Works

isCommentMeaningless only returns a string reason for a set list of known "meaningless" comments. It first normalizes text by:

1. Replacing all non-alphabet characters
2. Lower-casing the text
3. Removing any instances of the word "please" or its abbreviations

You can see the list of phrases in src/index.ts and example test cases in src/index.test.ts.

Want a new phrase to be added? Great! File a new phrase request issue

Why?

This utility will be used in JoshuaKGoldberg/OctoGuide, a linter for GitHub repository activity. That bot will be able to automatically post a friendly reply to seemingly meaningless comments with resources to help the commenter understand why posting them is not helpful.

Development

See .github/CONTRIBUTING.md, then .github/DEVELOPMENT.md. Thanks! 😶

Contributors

Josh Goldberg ✨ 💻 🖋 📖 🤔 🚇 🚧 📆 🔧

💝 This package was templated with create-typescript-app using the Bingo framework.