Hi,
In my community, no one should ever post code. It would always be off-topic.
However, sometimes people do have their posts formatted as code by accident.
Is it possible to disable everyone from applying the ‘code’ format to content in their post?
How do they use a code by mistake? By clicking the code button in the editor? Or simply leaving 4 spaces at the beginning of the line?
You can try to hide the code button with CSS using:
.code.btn {
display: none;
}
You can also change the site setting code formatting style from the default 4-spaces-indent to code-fences. If users can leave 4 blanks spaces before a line (maybe because they use emails?) it is difficult for them to use ``` by mistake.
In my case it’s always the user’s email app adding an indent at the first line in a paragraph. Their posts by email are jumbled up as a result.
More here:
Hi @dax,
Those are great ideas - I’ve implemented both. Thank you!
I do think it is because they add four spaces to the start of a line. I wonder if this was a typing convention in some schools or something? Or it is entered via their email program? It seems to happen a couple of times a week.
That is/was the standard way to create a paragraph when writing on paper:
I doubt they insert manually 4 space. I think instead that they write the posts via email. You should be able to determine this by looking at the post itself. If you see an envelope icon the post has been submitted by email.
Or they simple copy paste the text from an another program where they use the Tab to create new paragraphs,
You would be surprised! I had hundreds of users, in a instance where reply by email was disabled, putting the four spaces because they were mimicking pen and paper standards. They also did the same when using a word processor or email.
The Thunderbird email client does it automatically for some of my users. 
Dax, I’ve noted that even with this setting set as ‘code-fences’, the system still translates four spaces into a code formatting. Is there a way/option to disable the four spaces = code markdown/formatting globally on a site?
I ask because a couple of times a week a participant accidentally posts their comments in the code format, making it difficult to read. I think it is because this convention still prevails among some people:
No, there is not any way to do that.
Fair enough!
Please consider this a feature request.
I wonder what percentage of Discourse forums have a need for code blocks? It seems to me that might be the distinct minority of communities?
