Ask HN: Why isn't parsed by Hacker News for quotes?

Hacker News requires two new lines between paragraphs in order to render a line break. Often times, when copying & pasting from other services which insert a line break after a single newline, and then prepending each line with >, you'll end up with a mess of a message.

> For example, let's say this was my message. > I copy and pasted it from another website. > This is the result.

Therefore, many seem to result to code blocks (two spaces before each line):

  For example, let's say this was my message.
  I copy and pasted it from another website.
  This is the result.

Then, users on mobile, and even on the web, often times struggle as they have to scroll horizontally through the message.

If Hacker News instead treated the `>` character similarly to ` ` (i.e. pre-formatted text) but without sticking it in a div with a fixed width, this would be much less of an issue.