If you look at the Get Info window for the note, you’ll see that nearly all of its HTML attributes have been deleted. Also, its $HTMLExportTemplate is set to /BlogTopNote/TEMPLATES/bstTextRich. The html_note prototype is the basis for the template_note prototype. Yes, templates are evaluated under templates.

Templates should be have their code evaluated but not their HTML markup. This is what the bstTextRich template does.