OK that problem should be solved. There has to be at least one character in a post. The reason the quoted text was not counting as words is because that was the default setting of the forum.
I do know this - xenforo dropped the ball by not keeping the vbulletin reputation comments as a feature. The loss of the Reputation comments data when we switched to Xenforo really was the death knell for the site when it came to all the users that left. I know I missed it so much and I got way less interested in the site when that feature was gone and I run the site.