Obviously the GP should have ommitted that flamebait (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24160738), but a comment like yours also breaks the site guidelines—specifically this one: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
Going straight to Nazis is one habit that rule is intended to check. It leads to extremely predictable discussion that inevitably gets nasty because that's the only way for it not to be boring (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...).
It's absolutely clear what the commenter meant, since the whole controversy with Brendan Eich was about gay rights issues. It's not a stretch in any way to understand that "degenerate" meant "homosexual" or otherwise "immoral." Downplaying that interpretation really stretches "good faith interpretation" into the realm of "denial." Perhaps the commenter does not have English as their first language, in which case I'd give more leeway, but given the expression in the rest of the comment I doubt it.
As you said elsewhere it was not necessary for the commenter to use the word degenerate. I don't think anybody should be surprised by the reactions to it. It's entirely reasonable to criticize Mozilla's activist focus, or what went down with Eich, without stooping to that kind of language.
(edit/p.s. I agree completely with your last sentence, except that the Eich flamewar should just be retired.)
It's not "absolutely clear what the commenter meant", and that is the problem. Internet users are a thousand times too quick to assume they know "absolutely" what "the commenter meant" and then react reflexively to it. This is how the internet becomes optimized for outrage. That's why we have that guideline, and commenters here need to follow it. Note this guideline also: "Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead."
The better way is to react reflectively, not reflexively. That happens in two stages. First, wait for your initial agitation to subside. (By 'you' I mean all of us, because this is universal.) That's necessary, because the reflexes that drive us to argue in mechanical ways are always the fastest to arise. If you observe yourself—that is, if you direct a portion of your attention to what's going on inside you as you react to someone's comment, rather than focusing exclusively on the comment and how bad/wrong it is—you'll notice this phenomenon easily. It is an activating, agitating feeling that drives you to react immediately. This is a threat response, and all it can ever do is pattern-match, i.e. repeat past responses to past threats. Think of it as responding from cache. There isn't time to compute anything new. For that, you need the slower, reflective circuits, and you gain access to those by waiting a little.
The second stage is to use your reflective capacity—which is slower and calmer—to look at the comment from multiple angles and ask yourself things that there wasn't time for before: what other interpretations might there be? am I sure that what I feel I'm seeing is actually here? do I really need to react this way / post like this? what effect is my post going to have on the thread [1]? is there a different way to relate to this person? who do I really want to be, in this context? what community do I really want to be part of?
The reason this is better is not because it produces any particular content. People sometimes misunderstand that and assume that we're telling everyone to always be civil, constrained, etc.—but that's not it. Rather, it's because it's the only way to make discussions not be predictable. If we're all reacting with cached threat-responses, the only thing we can do is fight the same battles we've all been fighting for a long time. Since HN is a site for curiosity and curiosity withers under repetition [2], finding ways to escape the predictable [3] and make new moves in the dance is a must.
Obviously the GP should have ommitted that flamebait (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24160738), but a comment like yours also breaks the site guidelines—specifically this one: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
Going straight to Nazis is one habit that rule is intended to check. It leads to extremely predictable discussion that inevitably gets nasty because that's the only way for it not to be boring (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...).
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html