Hi Bryce,
What you say, makes sense... I just don't know whether there are any facilities to build custom notifications to be sent from the core Forum activity. As a non-developer (I'm more of an edtech consultant), I guess it would be possible to build a mod_qaforum based roughly on the mod_forum one with the specifics of what you aim to achieve. After all, Moodle is open source, and building plugins is always an option.
In any case, I would also suggest not to tinker with the core mod, as these are best left the way they are...