> The sign limit doesn't really do anything.
The basis of the decision to limit the number of signs to as few as 16 is briefly outlined in this thread.

> I know you're gonna say that "The sign limit stops text only saves", ...
The purpose of the sign limit is not to completely eradicate text-only saves, as evidenced by the fact that text-only saves are not the only subject to its limiting power. If we wanted to do that, we would have a rule against them and delete them. Rather, its purpose is to erect a psychological barrier between users and saves with a lot of text by suggesting that you are not meant to have too much text in a save. This is a well-established principle that works for most saves, and its being invalid is what you should try to convince us of, rather than that of the method of enforcing it. This method is designed to be easy to bypass [1] exactly because while this works for most saves, it does not work for all of them.

> ... but why would you even publish those??
Lack of knowledge of the forum, lack of experience, lack of common sense. While lack of common sense we cannot fix, the experience gained from publishing such saves eventually leads to either abandoning the idea of conveying huge amounts of information in text or discovering the forum. The latter is our goal, while the former leaves the possibility of the user posting another such save [2]. We believe that the MOTDs, the website, and all the various forum signs provide enough visibility to the forum, but this has never stopped users from being completely oblivious to it.

> They'll still get removed and/or downvoted.
Sadly, the score of such saves depends entirely on their content. This means that a text-only save, assuming its content is sufficiently popular, may very well get FP. To combat this and to contribute to the experience from earlier, we have a rule for demoting such saves from FP.

> If you want to make a save with many different components, you'll need a label or an explanation for each.
> Many signs are needed to describe the save and give instructions.
Great examples of cases in which you should start a thread about your save on the forum instead.

> Just tracing the signs takes a lot LOT of work, and using those fancy typewriters that people make takes a lot of copy-pastying, and then deleting all of those stamps.
Great examples of reasons why you should start a thread about your save on the forum instead.

> The sign limit should be removed because it stops users from fully enjoying The Powder Toy.
A small number of them, whom we have the well-established reasons above for making unhappy.

> It is basically useless, ...
> The fact that a script can be used to bypass the sign limit proves how useless it is in the first place.
> I haven't really seen many text-only saves, whether they use signs or text scripts or just typewriter-made text. The sign limit seems to prevent an issue that isn't really there, and still does a not-so-good job of doing it.
These would only hold if your initial assumption was correct. (This also applies to TuDoR2007's comment.)

> ... and removing it will not harm or destroy the game.
Very few things could harm or destroy the "game" due to its human-moderated nature, but this limit alleviates the need for the staff to filter a kind of low-effort spam saves, without having a significant impact on what can ultimately be achieved in the game.

We are open to discussions about this decision, provided they concern the reasoning behind it.


P.s. All this may seem weird coming from someone with a ton of saves with a lot of text in them. Note though that the only such saves I have published since I became a staff member are my TC block saves, and even in these I have run into the limitation of the simulation area while adding text. Even some of my earlier saves offload explanations to forum posts and manuals hosted on my website. Is it possible to add a lot of text to your saves? Clearly. Have I added a lot of text to my saves? Unfortunately, yes. Was it painful? Extremely. [3] Will I ever do it again? Unlikely. Do I recommend doing so? Definitely not.


[1] As you said, there is a myriad of ways beside signs to fill a save with what can be considered text.

[2] Posting these saves can be best described as recurring iterations, and are beneficial to our cause. As the terms of geometric series with a common ratio between 0 and 1 exclusive tend to 0, if upon each iteration there is a non-zero chance that the user discovers the forums, their inescapable destiny is to discover the forum or perish; whichever happens first.

[3] Even with scripts, if you need to go beyond the sign limit, it is not often that you want exactly as much or less text than what a save can hold. Thus, the pain comes more from having to express ideas in as few words as possible, rather than from having to create and use a texter script. This involuntary compression of information is lossy and results in bad experience for your audience. This is in itself would be enough to justify the existence of the aforementioned psychological barrier.