You can block someone? How?
Yes, you can block people...
a) you have to use Firefox or Google Chrome browser. some might say other browsers work too
b) you have to install the add-on called Greasemonkey. That is not hard to do...
In firefox, goto pull-down menu Tools / Add-ons / Get Add ons / and then "search all add-ons" for Greasemonkey
hmm... there are so many pages of 'hits' there, you still may have to hunt for it...
OK, so THIS link will find it faster https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/greasemonkey/?src=search
it will show 2.4 million users, and this icon 
After that is finished...
c) then, you go to the place where most Greasemonkey scripts are cataloged (userscripts.org) and search for killfile
Once again, THIS link will find that faster too... http://snowplow.org/martin/greasemonkey/killfile.user.js
When you click on that it should ask if you want to install killfile.
d) After you finish that, on most FR threads, on every post, to the right of [Report Abuse], you will
also see [kill] and [hide comment]
Forget about [hide comment] for now...
When you press [kill] the person's post goes bye-bye plus all other and future posts by that person as well...
...and their words get replaced with, for example:
Comment by Plutarch blocked. [unkill] [show comment]
Then, your blood pressure won't be bothered by that person again.
You can add as many annoying bots/trolls/hecklers to your blocked list as you like, AFAIK.
If you ever wish to check if some turkey is still being a jerk, you can check one of their blocked
posts by clicking [show comment].
...that only temporarily 'un-hides' that one post without "unblocking" that user.
Now, here is where the [hide comment] link is useful....
...after having reviewed that one 'un-hiden' post, [hide comment] can be used to re-hide it.
All that is relatively easy and takes about one minute. You are done.
Now, if you know a little programming, and you see something in a GM script like this that is
slightly wrong, or you think you could improve upon, you can just go in and tweak it yourself.
(and keep track of what you changed for future reference) For example...
A) it does not work on EVERY FR topic, like "chat" for one...
B) and I prefer all blocked posts to be even LESS noticeable, so I personally make them
smaller, and italics, and grey'ed out like this...| Comment by Plutarch blocked. [unkill] [show comment] |
For anyone who is capable of editing code, its easy to tweak things like (A) or (B),
otherwise one of us that knows how, could tell the author the suggested changes
and he might include them, so everyone else would eventually get the newer version.
Note:
The fix for (A) is easy, as follows ... On the line that says "freerepublic"
I changed this...
/focus/f-(news|chat)/
to this...
/focus/[a-z][a-z-]*/
And for the less important esthetics 'fix' (B) the change would go like this ...
On the line that says "<p>Comment by __SHORTUSER__ blocked."
I changed this...
<p>Comment by
to this...
<p><small><i><span style="background-color: #CCCCCC;">Comment by
AND 3 lines below that line, I changed this...
'</p></div>',
to this...
'</span></i></small></p></div>',
If you like this tool, there are lots of other Greasemonkey scripts you might like.
For example, Free Republic Posting Form Enhancer makes posting things at FR much nicer and easier,
And there are things at (userscripts.org)that can zot facebook ads, or make google better, etc...