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What is the word, a noun or an adjective that describes majority of comments, on an article for example, as “useless” compared to just one brilliant comment. “Useless” comments are dull, idiotic, stupid, ignorant, nonsense, etc. The word Garbage would be accurate, but it is insulting. The word should not insult anyone. The point of that word is to emphasize the opposing brilliance of one comment compared to 100 of others.

Example sentence:

"Most of these comments are ________, but a few are brilliant."

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    Note that the close-for-duplicate question is not quite a duplicate. This wants "not insulting" and also includes "dull" (i.e., boring), whereas the supposedly duplicate question doesn't preclude insulting and excludes boring.
    – L. Scott Johnson
    Commented Dec 17, 2019 at 15:33
  • @L. Scott Johnson But close enough that the (single word; idioms / proverbs not requested here) answers are exact duplicates (or, for 'noise', a very unusual broadening to use of writings). ELU is already incredibly hard to search because of all the repeated material.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Dec 17, 2019 at 16:49
  • Hmm, not quite. Noise (and to a lesser degree, chaff) would be appropriate answers to the other question, but not to this one due to their negative connotations running afoul of the "no insult" criterion.
    – L. Scott Johnson
    Commented Dec 17, 2019 at 17:27
  • I notice that all three answers so far have each received a downvote. Perhaps we're not getting the "not insult" aspect. So how about "redundant" or "superfluous"?
    – Ray Butterworth
    Commented Dec 17, 2019 at 17:52
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    The question is not a duplicate. In fact, it is not even close if one takes time to carefully read both.
    – Ooh LaLa
    Commented Dec 17, 2019 at 21:26

4 Answers 4

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prosaic could be used as a "nice" way to say uninspired. Indeed, it may possibly be taken as a compliment (see 1a below).

From Merriam-Webster:

Definition of prosaic
1a: characteristic of prose as distinguished from poetry : FACTUAL
b: DULL, UNIMAGINATIVE
prosaic advice
2: EVERYDAY, ORDINARY
heroic characters wasted in prosaic lives
— Kirkus Reviews

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An idiom applicable here is separating the wheat from the chaff. Cambridge Dictionary:

to separate things or people that are of high quality or ability from those that are not:

Literally it refers to the processes of threshing and winnowing to separate individual grains from husks. The metaphor for separating things of value from other items entered English from the Bible, including Matthew 3:12 (KJV):

Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.

In Middle English, the Nun's Priest's Tale by Chaucer gives one version of the resulting doctrine (3441-3443):

For Seint Paul seith that al that writen is,

To oure doctrine it is ywrite, ywis;

Taketh the fruyt, and lat the chaf be stille.

(For Saint Paul says that all that is written is written for teaching us, indeed; take the fruit and let the chaff be still.)

So in your example, most comments are chaff, but there is a bit of wheat among them.

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A technical term would be "noise".

In communications, a common measure is the Signal-to-noise ratio - Wikipedia. For instance, in voice communications one would measure the power of the voice part of the signal (what you want to hear) and the power of the background noise part of the signal (hiss, people chattering in the background, phones ringing, traffic, etc.).

  • Summarize the essential details and count the words: that's the amount of "signal".
  • Subtract that number from the total number of words in the original: that the noise.

So if the essential message can be given in 100 words, but 500 words are in the original, the S/N ratio would be 100:400, or 1:4, (which isn't very good).

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Vanilla says okay or whatever, but nothing bad beyond undistinguished. It’s a perfectly nice way to say neutral.

From [Merriam-Webster][2]:

Definition of vanilla
2: lacking distinction : PLAIN, ORDINARY, CONVENTIONAL

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