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A paragraph reading just “Comment” truncates the rest of the article

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#445 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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@monsterlag is already working on this.

Since Oct 21, 2026.

  • #448 by @monsterlag — open

Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
Half a day
Newbie friendliness
55/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
html, typescript
Domain
content

Research direction

Start in src/removals/content-patterns.ts: the /^Comments?$/i entry in BOILERPLATE_PATTERNS (around line 19) and the trailing-removal logic near line 1001 that drops everything after a match. Reproduce with the issue's comment.html fixture and debug: true, then check the removal log. Done means a short bold "Comment" paragraph followed by prose keeps the following paragraphs, while real comment sections are still removed. Existing tests for trailing comment removal should keep passing.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Hi kepano, a second one from me, this time relating to reading legal blogs with Defuddle.

Summary

BOILERPLATE_PATTERNS includes /^Comments?$/i. When a short element in the article matches it, everything after it is removed as "trailing non-content". Legal and academic blogs often use a bold "Comment" paragraph to introduce the author's own analysis, so the conclusion of the post is silently dropped.

Context

  • defuddle 0.19.4 (CLI) and 0.19.5 (npx [email protected]), linkedom
  • macOS 27.0, Node 26.12.0

Reproduction

npx [email protected] parse https://ukhumanrightsblog.com/2024/01/25/financial-sanction-and-free-speech-in-the-high-court/ --md | grep -c "The Court appeared to have little difficulty"
# 0

The page's HTML:

<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Comment</strong></p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The Court appeared to have little difficulty deciding the Claimant’s application, …</p>

With debug: true, the removals include:

{"step":"removeByContentPattern","reason":"trailing non-content","text":"The Court appeared to have little difficulty deciding the Claimant’s application, …"}
{"step":"removeByContentPattern","reason":"trailing non-content","text":"Returning to the conflict in issue, as the Court recorded, …"}
{"step":"removeByContentPattern","reason":"boilerplate text","text":"Comment"}

Minimal fixture. The page needs some length before the "Comment" paragraph. On a very short page the text survives, I assume because of the retry fallback.

P='<p>The court considered the statutory scheme, the relevant authorities and the evidence filed by both parties. It examined whether the measure was prescribed by law, whether it pursued a legitimate aim, and whether a fair balance had been struck between the rights of the individual and the interests of the community as a whole.</p>'
{ echo '<!doctype html><html><head><title>Example case note</title></head><body><main><article><h1>Example case note</h1>'
  for i in 1 2 3 4 5; do echo "$P"; done
  echo '<p><strong>Comment</strong></p>'
  echo '<p>The court appeared to have little difficulty with the application, but the reasoning raises wider questions that later cases will need to address.</p>'
  echo '<p>There are benefits to this approach, but it is not without risks.</p>'
  echo '</article></main></body></html>'; } > comment.html

npx [email protected] parse comment.html --md | grep -c -E "little difficulty|There are benefits"
# 0
sed 's#<strong>Comment</strong>#<strong>Analysis</strong>#' comment.html | npx [email protected] parse - --md | grep -c -E "little difficulty|There are benefits"
# 2

Cause

Expected behaviour

A "Comment" heading followed by ordinary prose is kept, along with the paragraphs after it.

Possible approach

Perhaps treat "Comment(s)" as the start of a comments section only when what follows looks like comments? For example comment markup or #comments, rather than ordinary paragraphs.

Dominant language
TypeScript
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Forks
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Avg merge
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Merged PRs (30d)
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