# Dealing with highly contentious discussions **URL:** \ **Category:** Community Building\ **Tags:** moderation\ **Created:** [May 17, 2017, 4:18pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/dealing-with-highly-contentious-discussions/62887 "2017-05-17T16:18:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 7
**Author:** ![tophee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/tophee/32/73406_2.png) [@tophee](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tophee)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2017, 6:16am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/dealing-with-highly-contentious-discussions/62887/7 "2017-05-18T06:16:24Z")
> [@codinghorror](#): > > there is a slightly less common way to dominate the conversation that we don’t yet account for: disproportionately long replies. This is a huge challenge in face-to-face meetings because you have to cut people off. Filibustering is also more severe in face-to-face because it is directly stealing other people’s airtime. This is not the case online. Long replies don’t prevent others from replying and nobody is forced to even read long replies (though it might be considered more polite). But long replies can certainly be annoying. So here is where the challenge but also the opportunity lies in online discussions: teach and encourage people to be brief, to put themselves in the position of the casual reader. Apart from another education message in the editor, this could be done by making the “Hide details” feature more prominent and teach people how and why to use it (e.g. in the bot’s advanced user tutorial)… --- _[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/dealing-with-highly-contentious-discussions/62887)._