I get that character limits are there to prevent spam, but shouldn't there just be a read more button instead?

We all know what happens when you press enter while writing a comment, but it doesn't work on scratch comments.

W W . ___________
W .__|. ‘ . ’ . ‘ . ’ . ‘ . ’ |__
.__|. ‘ . ’ . ‘ . ’ . ‘ . ’ . ‘ . ’ . |__
|' . ‘ . ’ . ‘ . ’ . ‘ . ’ . ‘__. ’ . ‘ . ’|
|. ‘ . ’ . ‘ . ’ . ‘ . ’ __|__|. ‘ .__|
|’ . ‘ . ’ . ‘ . ___|. ’ .|____|. ‘ .|
|’ . ‘ __. ’ .|' . ‘ . ’__. ‘ . ’ . ‘__|
|__|’ . ‘|__|’ . ‘ . |__|’ . ‘ . ’|__|
|__' . ‘ . ’ . ‘ . ’ . ‘ . ’ . ‘ . ’ . ‘ . |
W |__. ’ . ‘ . ’ . ‘ . ’ . ‘ . ’ . ‘__|
W .__|. ’ . ‘ . ’ . ‘ . ’ . ‘ __|
W .|. ’ . ‘ . ’ . ‘ . ’ . ‘ . ’ |

No support, this could easily lead to a lot more spam. In fact, before this limit was introduced, people would do things such as copy and paste entire Wikipedia articles into comments!
Also, some time ago I also talked to Paddle2See about if it was a rejected suggestion to remove the character limit, and he says that it was rejected since large blocks of text could be very hard for the servers to handle.

Can you please repeat what's wrong with a read more button?

No Support, and as stated above, it used to not exist, but then spammers would post whole wikipedia articles.
Also, Please don't ACSII spam.

GamingWombat wrote:

Can you please repeat what's wrong with a read more button?

The servers probably still couldn't handle that large of a comment.

They should probably make the character limit 1000 then.

GamingWombat wrote:

They should probably make the character limit 1000 then.

There are more than a million active users per day. Do you expect there is no waste of server space.

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GamingWombat wrote:

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Please be constructive, because it is helpful for everyone else.
Also, who are you quoting?

All i want is to be able to make text art.

GamingWombat wrote:

All i want is to be able to make text art.

That is actually spam according to the Scratch Wiki.