Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! This is exactly what I've been needing to post better here on FR. In my humble opinion this user script should be built in to the FR software so it shows up for everyone every time someone responds to a post.
Boomer: . . . this user script should be built in to the FR software . . .
AFIK, the transformation of "smart" quoteation marks, apostrophes, em-dashes, and other non-ASCII text into gobbledegook is not a bug in the FR software. It is a necessary consequence of making it possible to let posting a reply be simple enough for the untutored participant to post a simple sentence or two constructed in the "Tour Reply" box, without having to resort to knowing HTML coding. Anything beyond that, like cutting and pasting from other blogs or websites, goes way beyond that. Of this, we are warned. To participate that way, one ought to at least teach him/herself some very basic use of HTML tags to create a reply that has form, without causing unexpected results in the reply as it appears in the forum.
This ought to be counted as a minimum obligatory degree of using the system as conceived and inexpensively executed.
All you need to do to make a good reply is to paste whatever you want into the "Your Reply" box, then actually review the reply as it would be posted in the Preview box where it says in bold print at the top:
"If you posted your comment as-is, it would look like ...";
and then modify your input in the "Your Reply" box until when it is Previewed, what appears is what you want it to look like. That's your responsibility. Learning enough about the mechanics of making nice posts is the duty of the poster, so that the site can be accessed by everyone expensively at some level of coding experience.
Don't expect to be pasting in stuff from other sites without getting on the HTML learning curve. Even copying and pasting from the Forum page into "Your Reply" can cause unexpected consequences in the Preview. Be advised. KISS. IMHO.