Hello @codinghorror,
Thank you for answering me 
So, if I understand correctly since my profile settings are set to Watching ‘‘When I post in a topic’’, the automatic assignment post counts as a reply when assigning a topic?
The assignment posts help us keep track of the interactions, so we’d like to keep them.
That being said: is there a way to customize the notifications or to adjust the tool so that it is set to ‘‘Watching’’ only to the Assigned user, not the user that assigns it? Of course, that would not count if you assign the topic to yourself…
That way, we would only follow topics that we decide to follow or that are assigned to us.