I believe @sam implemented this and has now deployed it. Yes, confirmed on the sandbox at http://try.discourse.org as well.
So a reply to the first post, that does not quote the first post, is automatically considered a reply to the topic.
This sets us up for much less noisy notification streams for BB editors, since they are by definition the authors of the first post of almost every topic on BBS – and now won’t be “replied to” as much.
