There have been at least once where someone wrote a good long answer, with one or two sentences that were highly objectionable. In the case I am thinking of, I left a comment along with other people, the post was down voted and then the poster removed the sentence. The down votes were removed and everything is fine.
I have since wondered if it would have been better to simply edit out the sentence and leave a good explanation of why.
Thoughts?
The answer to What do you do about a single offensive sentence? as evidenced by the answers and comments is that are multiple options. None of the options given are "wrong" and none are better then the others. Some people prefer different approaches. Choosing any of the choices presented here, is fine (even the ones that I personally would not choose)
We are a community and no one person should feel they are responsible to make the "right" choice on behalf of the community. If your not a mod, the available options are all easily reversible. Even if you are a mod, most things you do can be easily reversed by the community.
All of these are valid options, if part of a post makes you think something needs to be done, do it. If others don't agree they have other options.
There are two things you should not do
Act in good faith, don't respond in anger, and do the best you can.
The main advantage of just editing and fixing the problem is that it avoids the drama that comes with leaving comments. The person gets a note explaining why that sentence was removed and they can see what the editor did to fix the post. Hopefully, the poster keeps that in mind the next time.
Also the poster gets to save face, because while lots of people will read comments, very few will look through an edit history.
I have had this happen a few times to me where someone edited out a sentence or two and left a message, and I would prefer that to being called out in a comment, especially if it saved me some downvotes.
For even more completeness, my take would be to edit and leave a comment that you edited it. This seems to have worked pretty well on SE sites where I've used it (and where I'm way more active than here). Something along the lines of
This is a nice answer but I edited to remove a couple of sentences that I found inappropriate. Obviously, if you don't like my edit, you can roll it back but I would encourage you to rewrite that section.
I think a comment works better than just the edit summary because it's more likely to be noticed by the answer's author. On the down-side, it's also more likely to be noticed by others, but people seem to vote based on what the answer says at the time they voted, not on what it said in the past.
The problem with editing it directly is the person doesn't get a chance to rectify their behaviour. I always think give someone a chance to make the change themselves first. So I'd:
If it really, really is offensive then you should probably flag it immediately.
In general I completely agree with Charlie Brumbaugh's answer. The only time when I think we should move beyond his answer is when a user has a pattern of objectionable behavior. Once a person has developed a pattern of weaving in rude or offensive content I feel like they should be handled more harshly.
When this is the case I think we should edit out the offensive content. Next add a comment that states you've edited out content that was offensive. Then we should flag the post with a custom mod flag that explains we edited out offensive content, and ask the mods to consider taking further action. If this person truly is a repeat offender then they should already be on the mods radar. The mods may or may not pursue further action like a temporary ban but we've done our job at this point.
