I struggle with a lot of the discourse I see about "quote posts", including talk about healthy and unhealthy use of them, or prescriptive discussions around what should be a reply and what should be a QP. (I imagine this comes from "baggage" related to bad interactions that generally I've not encountered (or to the extent that I have, a "block" is sufficient)).

I think this is tied up with peoples expectations around "how to behave in a reply" (which gets complicated replying to boosts). I've seen plenty of discourse on this platform around how to engage in that space which makes me feel uncomfortable engaging.

For me, QPs are a way of taking someone else's thought and getting "out of their space" so I can engage with the content neutrally. I can QP and add thoughts or questions without inconveniencing the person who originally posted. If they follow me back, then in a way we have shaken hands on an interaction, rather than replying to someone who may not follow me back and thus I may be imposing on.

For me, this is the benefit of QPs, and it's largely a UI enhancement of just "linking to a post". At this moment, I don't see any value to my UX from QP as a data/system feature.