I finally gave in and disabled QuickReply for all pages. Several annoyances down (no more accidental posting in the main entry rather than in response to someone else's comment + the ability to pick the smiley/icon for comment). And I found that this isn't documented in any FAQs, so maybe this will be useful to someone else:
On Admin Console enter the following:
set disable_quickreply 1
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I like the new mattress. I should make a picture of my room sometime. It's cute. Although it's a bit of a mess currently.