What if you would show the first line of text that is not a quote:
- post 1 has text
- post 113 quotes (and/or replies to) something from post 1
- post 1546 quotes (and/or replies to) something from post 113
- here you can show (just like a normal quote does) the first few words of post 113(lets say the first 2 lines of text?), but which are not part of the quote of post 1. (post 1 is not shown at all in the preview. it is only shown IF the user clicks on the preview)
i think this would bring quite a lot of context, without adding much noise (making the “show replied to post” appear a quote).
This improvement would also be related to my own issue: Check post i've replied to has somewhat bad ux as it would make (at least for the user) the “quote” and “reply to post” previews the same, and act in the same way. And having the user learn how only 1 thing works, instead of 2 seems like a good achievement in the ease of use category.