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    @Michael mmm, arguably, people don't mangle tables because they don't use them in the first case because the functionality isn't there. It would come in handy sometimes to have a possibility to present tabular data, although I don't know how to implement it exactly (Converting the way I show in my answer into a real <table> might be one possibility) Commented Dec 30, 2010 at 16:43
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    @Pekka Sure, I'm not against it, but the OP said "It seems like a lot of people try to display tables in SO questions but don't do a very good job", which I've not really seen Commented Dec 30, 2010 at 17:06
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    @Michael Mrozek - I've run across performance comparisons or feature comparisons that are munged into the code formatting. It would be nice to see them (and the SQL posts) formatted more nicely. Commented Dec 30, 2010 at 17:40
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    meta.stackexchange.com/questions/16356/… Commented Dec 30, 2010 at 18:14
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    Found through @KennyTM's link, another non-SQL table use: truth tables Commented Dec 30, 2010 at 18:43
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    @Michael Mrozek - Are you kidding? I see multiple examples of mangled tables every day. Commented Sep 29, 2011 at 20:08
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    This is how they solve tables on MediaWiki: mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Tables At first it looks a bit complicated, but if you carefully look at it, it isn't too bad at all. It saves a lot of typing effort in comparison with the (unsupported) html markup and manual formtting in code blocks. Just my €0.02 Commented Aug 6, 2012 at 7:22
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    @MichaelMrozek: "Do you have any example posts of people mangling tables?" electronics.stackexchange.com/a/42266/142 Commented Oct 10, 2012 at 13:32
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    @MichaelMrozek: Another example where tables would have been useful. I'm trying to number the sections of a regular expression to make it easier to illustrate what each is doing. Simple tables would have made the horizontal alignment much easier. Commented Feb 20, 2013 at 15:50
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    Here is another example: stackapps.com/questions/288/… Commented Mar 3, 2013 at 8:24
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    GitHub Flavored Markdown supports them: github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/wiki/Markdown-Cheatsheet#tables Commented Mar 27, 2013 at 12:17
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    I think GitHub Flavored Markdown is more appropriate for a programming site like SO. It also supports crreating tables Commented Oct 17, 2014 at 5:49
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    Here I am, in the year 2016 and still no table markdown... I guess stackexchange just doesn't care about table formatting Commented Jun 28, 2016 at 13:31
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    Why is this status-declined? I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be implemented. Commented Feb 3, 2017 at 20:26
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    It's completely unacceptable that we have to abuse code blocks to fake tables to provide example data for our SQL questions. Why hasn't this been implemented years ago? Commented Mar 7, 2017 at 22:13