<p>It seems to me that we have to balance two imperatives on CV:</p>

<ol>
<li>We need to preserve information that is germane to on-topic threads and provide information about statistics, machine learning, data mining and data visualization.  </li>
<li>Material that offends someone or makes some class of people feel unwelcome should be deleted.  </li>
</ol>

<p>How should these two be balanced?  It's hard to say in the abstract; it will probably require case-by-case judgments.  I should say that I have been consistently impressed by our moderator team and thankful for their (extensive) efforts to keep CV running smoothly.  For what it's worth, <a href="http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0394800818" rel="nofollow">if I ran the zoo</a> I'll tell you just what I'd do:  </p>

<ul>
<li>In one hypothetical case, if person A said that a $t$-test is a parameter estimate divided by its standard error, and person B found that offensive, I would leave that content on the site nonetheless.  </li>
<li>In another hypothetical case, if person A made a comment that isn't particularly relevant and doesn't communicate any information about statistics, and person B found that offensive, I would delete it, even if it had been highly upvoted.  </li>
</ul>

<p>This seems completely unambiguous to me.  Note that I did not include anything about person B's reasoning behind feeling offended.  That strikes me as immaterial.  The rationale could be totally bogus&mdash;I just don't care.  I would leave a note to the original commenter explaining the situation, however.  I would also be open to arguments that addressed the case on its merits, but I would not give any weight to 'slippery slope' arguments.  </p>
