How to use the same java-method in a slightly different way in selenium?

After much thought eventually decided to post my question at the risk to get banned for a stupid question: D Therefore apologize in advance

So I write automation test using java with selenium. Purpose - to compare comments value on different pages on the website. But when I need to get this value through find.Element / s there is much duplicate code I made a separate method but for the homepage there is exception - I have to search through certain webElement / s (in this case - variable article) unlike other pages where I can just use driver.find ...

So I wanna know what the most efficient way to use my commentsAvailabilityAndValue(); method to find this value. There is a possibility for example somehow change whats parameters method takes but only in case when we call it for homepage? Or make "reference/inheritance" to this method but instead driver use article? I hope you understood.

Here is snippets:

@Test
    public void delfiTest() {
        WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();

        //Here would be my finals By.xpath driver settings etc. but it's not so important so let's skip it.Add only one example
        private final By COMMENT_COUNT_HOME_PAGE = By.xpath(".//a[@class = 'comment-count text-red-ribbon']");

        //Getting needed article from the list.
        List<WebElement> articles = driver.findElements(ARTICLES_HOME_PAGE);
        articles.removeIf(arr -> arr.getText().isEmpty());
        WebElement article = articles.get(2);

        //Getting comment count on homepage. We cannot use my methods because we need search through variable article insted of driver
        int commentsValueHP = 0;
        //Checking if comment count even exist.
        boolean exists = article.findElements(COMMENT_COUNT_HOME_PAGE).size() != 0;

        if (exists) {
            WebElement commentCount = article.findElement(COMMENT_COUNT_HOME_PAGE);

           String commentCountText = commentCount.getText();
           String replacedText = commentCountText.replaceAll("\\D+", "");

           commentsValueHP = Integer.parseInt(replacedText);
        }

        //Proceeding to the article page.
        titleHP.click();

        //Getting commentsValue on article page. Here everything ok
        int commentsValueTitleAP = commentsAvailabilityAndValue(COMMENT_COUNT_TITLE_ARTICLE_PAGE);


        Assertions.assertEquals(commentsValueHP, commentsValueTitleAP, "Comments value on homepage and article page(in title) doesn't match.");

       //Here would be same steps but with other pages

       //METHODS:
    private int commentsAvailabilityAndValue(By selector) {
        int commentsValue = 0;

        boolean exists = driver.findElements(selector).size() != 0;

        if (exists)
        {
           commentsValue = getCommentsValue(selector);
        }
        return commentsValue;
    }


    private int getCommentsValue(By selector) {
        WebElement commentCount = driver.findElement(selector);

        String commentCountText = commentCount.getText();
        String replacedText = commentCountText.replaceAll("\\D+", "");

        int commentsValue = Integer.parseInt(replacedText);

        return commentsValue;
    }