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What are the limits to which answers and questions can be pushed ? I've written quite lengthy answers in the past which seem to be quite complete, but lets pretend there's a question which requires drawing on whole lot of context, whole lot of research, and whole lot of in-depth explanation, maybe some code/script examples. How much of that can an answer contain ? I am more interested in answers, but let's include question limits for completeness.

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This is answered on meta.stackexchange.com (the meta of all metas) and the anwser is a maximum of 30 000 characters...

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    Interestingly enough, the answer on that post suggests it's 30,000 chars, but in the comments someone mentioned there exists an answer of around 50,000 chars. Plus question and answer are a bit dated by a few years. I've commented on the answer, so hopefully will find out soon if this is still accurate.
    – Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy
    Commented Jan 20, 2018 at 23:47
  • Also , this data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/248047
    – Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy
    Commented Jan 20, 2018 at 23:49
  • Yup, might have changed in the meantime. I just did a Google search and the first answer confirmed what I had in my mind, so I answered as I was on Meta having a laugh... BTW, Not been in chat for a while! How are you doing???
    – Fabby
    Commented Jan 20, 2018 at 23:51
  • I'll get in chat in a second :)
    – Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy
    Commented Jan 20, 2018 at 23:53
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    So, I just ran a small printf loop and output that to my clipboard. Turns out pure 30,000 characters is the limit. But considering the fact that those other answers had code snippets and they are over 30,000, I suppose there's technically whole lot of room for going crazy with answers :)
    – Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy
    Commented Jan 21, 2018 at 0:00
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    worth noting cc @SergiyKolodyazhnyy that the post body schema on SEDE counts the characters of rendered html. 30,000 is the markdown limit (ie what you actually type in the box) - see this query
    – Zanna Mod
    Commented Jan 21, 2018 at 17:47
  • @Zanna So what does it mean for an answerer ? Does it mean that the markdown symbols (like double/tripple # for heading) count towards the limit ? How does difference between rendered html and what is typed in the box affect the amount of info that can be put into an answer ?
    – Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy
    Commented Jan 21, 2018 at 17:57
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    @SergiyKolodyazhnyy I know very little html, but if you install the markdown package on Ubuntu, write a text file with markdown formatting, and then run markdown file output.html you can compare the character/byte count of the original file and the rendered file. The 30,000 character limit is the number of characters you can type in the box (I am not sure whether characters = bytes in this context - that could be an interesting MSE question)
    – Zanna Mod
    Commented Jan 21, 2018 at 18:01
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    (sorry - you have to do a redirection in that command - it writes to stdout)
    – Zanna Mod
    Commented Jan 21, 2018 at 18:13
  • @Zanna Reverted to original answer which was closer to reality. (Only because Serge and me talked about it in chat and he thought he saw answers >30000 that I edited it to provide second (wrong) assumption.
    – Fabby
    Commented Jan 22, 2018 at 10:16

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