Suggestion: Make the 12K character limit on posts apply to space taken up rather than characters

Question

What if I wanted to put twelve thousand lines of code in a sample code block? Then I would have to make a new post to add text, but the answer wouldn’t even be long. Also, formatting... why do the asterisks in a bold word count towards the character limit?

Comments

they count because they are characters


why do you want to put twelve thousand lines of code in an answer. thats a lot of code.

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If you're posting that much code you should just link to pastebin.com

Answer 1

What if I wanted to put twelve thousand lines of code in a sample code block?

Will anyone ever have a need to do this though? You can just link it externally.

I take your point that markup doesn't need to count toward the character limit, and I agree the limit should be higher. But I also think there aren't many situations where it's absolutely essential for you to go over 12,000 chars, with or without formatting + links.

For what it's worth, I recall PM's position on this being "make your answer shorter then".