In a recent case I gave a user a warning (which is a thing in Mastodon, it records the strike in the mod interface and leaves a note for future mod action) but left the reported posts up, since it seemed like the harm was already done—deleting the posts didn't seem to mitigate harm, but might have lead to misunderstanding since the outside-the-rules posts couldn't been seen.
Is this a good approach, or should we err on the side of taking them down?
