I think this was an attempt to just discourage people who were asking for "tips" on how to use FB. Questions like those really belong in Beginners or General, roughly depending on the difficulty level of the question.
But under this description, we’ve received a number of posts where people will indeed post "source code only", sometimes without comments, which wouldn’t always tell the readers how the code works, or even what it does.
The main purpose of this subforum is to teach or present ideas other people, rather than to just be an archive for people’s code.
For places to archive source code, source control sites like Bitbucket or Github provide a good way to store, search and share code, and provide a useful platform for collaboration. (Particularly Gist for short snippets or short-term projects.)
Or if you're not particularly interested in sharing your code or tracking changes, then something like Google Drive or Dropbox provide places to store your code online in case of hard drive failure, and also provide some sharing facility.
In line with this subforum's aim, I am writing some suggestions about how to post code, that might help people to write more helpful posts, and to touch more minds with their efforts:
- - Include an introduction that explains what the code does, or what it demonstrates, or the problem it tries to solve. This may be the only part of the post that ends up getting read by many people, so it provides an important first impression.
- Walk people through your code, using comments where needed, so they can understand how it works without having to compile and run it.
- Make sure the code (or the important part) is easy to identify and reasonably easy to understand. This may not always be easy depending on the difficulty or length of the code, but of course when it's harder that makes a good explanation even more valuable.
- If the code produces something visually interesting, consider uploading a screenshot somewhere and including it in the post. An interesting screenshot may inspire people to try the code themselves, and adapt it to produce interesting changes.
- Finally, make sure that the code you post compiles and runs, and produces something worthwhile, to reward the people who have read your post and decide to try out your code.
I believe that the majority of people who post to Tips and Tricks are doing so because they believe it's a place for creativity. They have an idea or a small project they've worked on that they want to share with other people, and they want the people who read their posts to come away having learned something, or picked up an idea or code snippet they can work with or adapt. Or just to come away with a sense of appreciation of the work that's gone into the code and the post.
It is my hope that these suggestions will help the people who post here. If anyone has any other ideas that would help people write good posts, or you want to highlight examples of posts done well, then do please post them, but keep things constructive.