[@laptoplife Participant 2 weeks, 2 days ago]

Thank you so much for your post and the suggestions.

Using the suggestions I have determined that this problem doesn’t occur if I use one of these options. All of the options don’t have to be used, just picking one gets rid of the issue.

1) Don’t use the closed threads option at all.
2) Deactivate the plugin Turnkey bbPress by WeaverTheme
3) Change the theme. The lock shows normally without the code being there.

But this doesn’t really solve it because I want to keep the theme and the plugin.

I assumed that there is an issue with the way the dashicons were being processed.

I added this to functions.php. It did not change anything.

I feel like perhaps there is an issue with the title formatting.

If I go to the post and click on Edit Topic, it doesn’t show any extra code in the title section. Yet I see that this <span> is being inserted into the title of the forum post (as shown above) and I think WordPress may be stripping out the code which is why it shows. I could be wrong in this, but where would I look to see how to change this.