There is only one website on the Internet that needs to fix Free Republic’s problem with character encoding. That website is freerepublic.com.
While it is good to inform posters of a workaround for the BUG on this site, the real solution is to fix the BUG, not have users jump through hoops to use the website.
When this problem first cropped up, JR said they were working on a fix. That was before Thanksgiving.