McQuary limit

McQuary limit


   [from the name of the founder of alt.fan.warlord; see {warlording}.] 4
   lines of at most 80 characters each, sometimes still cited on Usenet
   as the maximum acceptable size of a {sig block}. Before the great
   bandwidth explosion of the early 1990s, long sigs actually cost people
   running Usenet servers significant amounts of money. Nowadays social
   pressure against long sigs is intended to avoid waste of human
   attention rather than machine bandwidth. Accordingly, the McQuary
   limit should be considered a rule of thumb rather than a hard limit;
   it's best to avoid sigs that are large, repetitive, and distracting.
   See also {warlording}.