I'm getting "Your post appears to contain code that is not properly formatted as code" when there isn't any code in the post

Question

I'm trying to submit the following question:

I have an application hosted on Azure and accessed through a web page. Authentication to the application is handled by signing in through Facebook. The application is not a Facebook canvas application, though it can share some activity to a user's Facebook stream.

I have two URLs to access my service; one http://projectgreenwich.cloudapp.net/ points to the site in the cloud (on Azure) while the other http://projectgreenwich.research.microsoft.com relies on DNS to give the application a more official looking URL. My problem is that in the Facebook application set-up () I can only give one "App Domain" for the Facebook authentication to pass back to. I can fork from that domain, e.g. having projectgreenwich.cloudapp.net, projectgreenwichlocal.cloudapp.net, projectgreenwichtest.cloudapp.net, etc. But if I try to add a different domain (e.g. projectgreenwich.research.microsoft.com) I get an error when I save the Facebook app settings.

My solution has been to add http://projectgreenwich.research.microsoft.com as what Facebook term the "Mobile Web URL" for the app. This fixes my immediate problem (authentication on Facebook from http://projectgreenwich.research.microsoft.com works) but it leaves me uncomfortable about two things:

 1. It's a hack. The http://projectgreenwich.research.microsoft.com URL
    is no more a "Mobile Web URL" than the
    http://projectgreenwich.cloudapp.net/ is.
 2. If I add other DNS entries
    resolving to http://projectgreenwich.cloudapp.net/ there's no
    further place to add them.

There are a couple of related answers on Stack Overflow that suggest this is not possible and that Facebook’s blog-post to the contrary is misleadingly worded, but I’m hoping things have changed:

 - [Zachary
   Kestenbaum](http://stackoverflow.com/users/988990/zachary-kestenbaum)'s
   answer to [ginja](http://stackoverflow.com/users/628372/ginja)'s
   question "[Is it possible to configure a Facebook app to be used
   across multiple domains?](http://stackoverflow.com/q/7553607/575530)"
   here: http://stackoverflow.com/a/7722584/575530
 - [Ross](http://stackoverflow.com/users/539394/ross)' answer to
   [Winaji](http://stackoverflow.com/users/540834/winaji)'s question
   "[Facebook Connect for one application with multiple
   domains?](http://stackoverflow.com/q/4431574/575530)" here:
   

What’s the correct/best approach to have multiple unrelated App Domains associated to a Facebook application?

But I cannot, since Stack Overflow presents the error message:

"Oops! Your question couldn't be submitted because: Your post appears to contain code that is not properly formatted as code. Please indent all code by 4 spaces using the code toolbar button or the CTRL+K keyboard shortcut. For more editing help, click the [?] toolbar icon."

My post does not contain any code. Why does the Stack Overflow formatting engine (or whatever is throwing the error) think there's code in the question I'd like to post and how do I persuade Stack Overflow that there is no code present?

Answer 1

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the way you (seemingly arbitrarily) inserted line breaks on lines with high Markdown (which looks somewhat like code) density is causing the site to think that those lines are actually chunks of code. Try removing the line breaks in the list and try posting it again.

 [...]

 1. It's a hack. The http://projectgreenwich.research.microsoft.com URL is no more a "Mobile Web URL" than the http://projectgreenwich.cloudapp.net/ is. 
 2. If I add other DNS entries resolving to http://projectgreenwich.cloudapp.net/ there's no further place to add them.

 [...]

 - [Zachary Kestenbaum](http://stackoverflow.com/users/988990/zachary-kestenbaum)'s answer to [ginja](http://stackoverflow.com/users/628372/ginja)'s question "[Is it possible to configure a Facebook app to be used across multiple domains?](http://stackoverflow.com/q/7553607/575530)" here: http://stackoverflow.com/a/7722584/575530
 - [Ross](http://stackoverflow.com/users/539394/ross)' answer to [Winaji](http://stackoverflow.com/users/540834/winaji)'s question "[Facebook Connect for one application with multiple domains?](http://stackoverflow.com/q/4431574/575530)" here:

Answer 2

I have a similar problem when trying to post an answer to audio-file-encoding-and-decoding. I have tried moving things around but as yet can't post it. Initially in the list I had a space before *. And there was one space after the And/Or line. No matter what I do I cannot seem to post that. And it doesn't really look like code???

Stack overflow indicates the And/Or line as the problem with "Your post appears to contain code that is not properly formatted as code.".

EDIT Argh. Still moving things around. It would be nice if there was a "post this anyway" option instead of preventing the item being posted.

EDIT Hmmm. INTERESTING. Found the problem. Looks like a bug. It seems to be connected to the readable references. So if you have readable references and a list you have a problem.

Problem:

[wikipedia:base64][base64]
. . . <list> . . . 
[base64]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base64

No problem:

[wikipedia:base64][1]
. . . <list> . . . 
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base64

Here is the answer that failed to post:

[wikipedia:base64][base64] ([rfc3548][rfc3548]) is the right method to choose I would think. It is most common now I think having taken over from [wikipedia:uuencoding][uuencode]. 

To answer the question . . . 

* Add some padding. The wikipedia article on base64 gives a good example of padding.

* And/Or add a header to your audio string including length. The header could also include other control data so it may be something you want to include anyway.

[base64]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base64
[rfc3548]: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3548
[uuencode]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uuencoding

Here is the answer that posted ok:

[wikipedia:base64][1] ([rfc3548][2]) is the right method to choose I would think. It is most common now I think having taken over from [wikipedia:uuencoding][3].

To answer the question . . . 

1. You could add some padding. The [wikipedia article on base64][1] gives a good example of padding. 
2. Or you could add a header to your audio string including length. The header could also include other control data so it may be something you want to include anyway.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base64
[2]: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3548
[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uuencoding

Answer 3

I suspect your [Zachary Kestenbaum] reference, because it's split over two lines.

I was getting this warning from a reference split over two lines. I.e., my post looked like:

Blah blah blah [blah
blah] blah blah.

[blah blah]: http://blah.com

and the [blah blah] reference split over the first two lines was causing the error message, even though the preview correctly rendered it as a link. This was really confusing, because my post also had code in it.

I think this is a bug. At minimum, the warning should tell you what the system has identified as ill-formatted code.

Answer 4

I got this with extensive blockquoting. It's another detection error, on using several levels (> then >> then >>> then back to >> etc) with only text. In the end, randimly spraying empty lines between the first few lines of blockquoting made it go away.