The title given to this article is incorrect due to technical limitations. The correct title is alt.fan.warlord.

alt.fan.warlord is a Usenet newsgroup dedicated to the dissection and flaming of .signature files (.sigs) used in other Usenet groups. It was most well-known during the early and mid-1990s.

alt.fan.warlord targeted mostly .sigs that violated a principle of Usenet netiquette known as the McQuarry limit — that a .sig should be less than 80 columns wide (preferably 72 or less), and no longer than four lines. This limit kept Usenet messages reasonably short, conserving bandwidth, and ensured that an 80-column terminal — the most common display type — could properly display the .sig without text wrapping to the following lines.

However, many people used .sigs that violated the McQuarry limit. These sometimes stretched to hundreds of lines in length, including such things as ASCII artwork or long collections of favorite quotations — but no relevant information. In extreme cases, a .signature could be several times as long as the post to which it was attached.

A Usenet user with the handle Warlord became infamous among the Usenet community for both possessing such a .sig and refusing to change it to better conform to the standard. Other Usenet denizens began to mock this .sig — a process which became known as "warlording." alt.fan.warlord was established as a forum for warlording, and its regulars continued to mock or flame any .sigs they found ugly or impractical (including some which did fit the McQuarry limit standards).

Although some warlording was little more than flaming, regulars of the group considered a "good warlording" to be one which contained sardonic humor or vicious wit.

External links

• alt.fan.warlord (news:alt.fan.warlord)