Talk:NAQT Invitational Series

Character counts

There's basically two schools of thought on character counts / length limits:

• Length limits should count the actual characters in the question because their primary purpose is to control how long it takes to actually read questions.
• Length limits should count how long the question appears on the page because their primary purpose is to avoid scaring inexperienced moderators into thinking questions are unmanageable.

NAQT takes the former approach (and thus does not count pronunciation guides and power marks in their length limits) whereas most invitationals take the latter approach (and thus count the number of lines in standard font size/margins rather than characters, and include everything that appears on the page). In neither case would I consider the rules "arcane" or at all irrational, and both approaches seem like valid choices. I'm not sure what the aside in this article is getting at. Matt Weiner (talk) 09:59, 17 March 2021 (CDT)