What Does McQuary Limit Mean?

The McQuary limit (sometimes spelled “McQuarry limit”) is a term related to an obsolete practice called “warlording.” This was done on the USENET newsgroups of the 1980s and 1990s. The McQuary limit is a limit to the size of a signature block, a digital block of text and characters attached to a USENET post.

Techopedia Explains McQuary Limit

Users who were in love with bulky and elaborate signature blocks might exceed the McQuary limit by quite a large margin. Some of these blocks included ASCII art, where individual text letters and characters were used to draw large, cartoonish pictures in the signature block. One example was the use of ASCII art to create an image of the sword of Conan the Barbarian. The practice of warlording, which utilized the McQuary limit as a kind of understood network etiquette, would use sarcasm or other means to criticize these oversized signature blocks. Another faux pas in USENET was including the signature block more than once in a post.