It should be noted that there is another sticky on every forum section: How to use this forum - please read., which has the code tags requirement at item 7. The items are numbered in the order that people will need to know them during the process of creating a post. I think it would make sense to remove all the duplicate content from Read this before posting a programming question and to add the requirement to read the "How to use this forum - please read." post as the first item on the "Read this before posting a programming question" with a link to that post.
Johan_Ha:
Don't be surprised, if a newbie, every once in a while, misses that.
Except that they should be reading the "How to use this forum - please read.", which states that rule quite prominently. Of course many beginners won't bother to read the stickies at all. I think it would help to bump the "How to use this forum - please read." post to the top of the stickies instead of its current location at the bottom. There has also been talk about changing the forum software to force people to that URL before they can make their first post on the forum but that will require some work from the website team. Of course we also tell people to read them but that's only after they've already made a post that demonstrates that they didn't.
Johan_Ha:
Another approach for sticky posts would be to sort the topics according to what advice would be mostly needed. What "rules" are mostly being broken.
My main gripe with "How to use this forum - please read." is that cross posting is not more prominently mentioned. This is a huge problem on this forum that happens every day it deserves its own number in that list. I also don't like that it is listed as a "guideline". That's just not a strong enough term. No cross posting should be a rule and it should be clear that repeatedly breaking that rule has consequences beyond a "warning". Other than that I think the information on that post is excellent. Maybe it could be condensed down a bit or start with a summary for the tl;dr crowd.