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 checks text in three passes, returning the first reason that matches:

1. Trimming the text and checking it against the known phrases as-is, such as for emoji like "👍"
2. Lower-casing the text and replacing all non-alphabet characters, so that "+9001!" is treated the same as "+1"
3. Using are-docs-informative to check whether the text contains only words from a known phrase, ignoring "useless" words such as "a" and "please"

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 is used by OctoGuide, a linter for GitHub repository activity, to power its comment-meaningful rule. That rule automatically posts a friendly reply to seemingly meaningless comments with suggestions 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.