# RSS subscription broken by post content

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/rss-subscription-broken-by-post-content/282415>\
**Category:** Bug\
**Tags:** rss\
**Created:** [October 16, 2023, 4:42pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/rss-subscription-broken-by-post-content/282415 "2023-10-16T16:42:53Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jeff5-really](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/jeff5-really/32/333611_2.png) [@jeff5-really](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jeff5-really)\
**Post date:** [October 16, 2023, 4:42pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/rss-subscription-broken-by-post-content/282415/1 "2023-10-16T16:42:53Z")

</div>

On the [Python Discourse](https://discuss.python.org/) I noticed that my RSS subscription to the `users` (renamed “Help”) category had stopped working. On trying to re-establish it, the subscription `https://discuss.python.org/c/users/7.rss` results in invalid content that my reader (Thunderbird) will not load. It fails validation at W3C:

> **[Feed Validator Results: https://discuss.python.org/c/users/7.rss](https://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cgi?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdiscuss.python.org%2Fc%2Fusers%2F7.rss)**

Since that check fails, I assume I’m not the only one affected.

The problem seems to be an unexpected character in the post `https://discuss.python.org/t/beginner-help-with-concatenating-arrays/36226`. In the feed, the offending sub-string comes out as `b'N \x02x KSQT'` (two occurrences).

It’s not that user’s fault, of course, but Discourse’s for letting it through, and the long-term fix lies with you.

An admin there (or at least a CPython core dev) suggested I report it here.

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_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/rss-subscription-broken-by-post-content/282415)._