There was an extension¹ posted a few years ago² which implements blocking on the client side. The possible issue is there may be some users who you wish to block in the general case that do add value in other threads, so you would have to weigh up those decisions.
However, it feels like a bad idea to me, if only because it reduces community building and curation a little. Without a mass of users taking action via flagging or reporting on community problems the end result will surely just tend towards submissions and comment threads that are simply garbage, as that is what new users would see as the social norms.
All that said, I wouldn't blame people for using it. There do seem to be a few members of this community that I'd not want to know in real life, and given their comments in some threads they'd not want to know me either ;)
Edit: I see you mentioned an extension in another thread, and this may be the same one. Still, I'll leave this here in case others want to see the links.
However, it feels like a bad idea to me, if only because it reduces community building and curation a little. Without a mass of users taking action via flagging or reporting on community problems the end result will surely just tend towards submissions and comment threads that are simply garbage, as that is what new users would see as the social norms.
All that said, I wouldn't blame people for using it. There do seem to be a few members of this community that I'd not want to know in real life, and given their comments in some threads they'd not want to know me either ;)
Edit: I see you mentioned an extension in another thread, and this may be the same one. Still, I'll leave this here in case others want to see the links.
¹ https://github.com/morgante/hn_blocklist
² https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10005699