Itās interesting to discuss this and in theory, you could dive in and change how it worksā¦
but a core functionality is bound to overwritten as soon as they do one tiny update to it and all your work is in vain.
I can safely conclude that the quote system is a very good way for th user replying AND the users reading it afterwards. It also supports multiple ārepliesā in one post instead of a user double/triple posting because (s)he is pressing reply on every separate post.
The chances of us digging into the fundamentals are slim:
- Itās up to Discourse to make it work
- Our Dev Kris only has that capacity, which is allocated to more urgent and more impactful items
Personally, I value the notion that this is one of the purest first-world-problems we can imagine 
, and you can play fun jokes with it 
(and sometimes accidentally use it wrong, but sorry is an easy word to say someone wrote in a songā¦ 
)ā¦and every forum should wish something like thisā¦I donāt know any other, but arrange this (if it doesnāt already exist) but you the King of that forumā¦