Moderating online education forums: delete, snip or leave rudeness? I'm a moderator for an online forum for a particular module at a distance-learning University.

Part of the job is to answer questions regarding course materials, the other main part is to be on the watch for inappropriate content (rudeness, giving answers away, etc)

In the event of students being rude to each other (which is rare), I wonder what the best approach is. For example:


  I think your given use of fleebles to induce warbling is not a good
  idea for [reasons]. You must be really up-yourself to think that.


In this situation, am I better snipping the last part out (and leaving in the bit relevant to the discussion), removing the whole post, or even leaving the post there and only acting if the victim is offended. (Maybe there are other options out there?) I generally lean towards snipping, but I wonder if deleting the whole post is "cleaner" (I don't like deciding what can stay and what has to leave)

If the post was racist/homophobic/sexist/etc. then I would delete the whole post and report the student, I'm looking at cases which are rude and deserve a reminder to "be nice".
Snip the last part out, send a private message to the poster reminding them of the behavioral standards expected in the course forum.

I don't see any reason to remove the whole post, if there are parts that are appropriate. Removing the whole post makes it seem like your motivation is to punish the poster, rather than to keep the forum professional and constructive.

I would recommend against leaving rude comments there until/unless someone takes offense. This is a forum that is hosted and moderated by you, not your students. It is your responsibility as an educator to create a constructive learning environment (to the extent that you can). It's not your students' responsibility - they have to be responsible for their own actions, but they shouldn't have to be responsible for making you respond to other students' actions.