To get Toots' stars, you type
:nyc
Well that will give you one star, for multiples you want to do it more times. (:nyc :nyc :nyc :nyc :nyc)This is one of the 'smileys' available if you click on the smile icon
and then 'More smileys' and scroll down far enough.
In this case, you can see the letters for mine instead of the star because I clicked 'Go Advanced' and then selected 'Disable smilies in text' under miscellaneous options.
One way to see how somebody posted something is to click on the 'Quote' button
on their post.