In the topics list, the star icon indicates you have posted in the topic in the past but it's also the icon for "New Content" which is a different beast. It's easy enough to edit (and I'll do that on my install) but just throwing it out there as food for thought. There's a certificate icon in Font Awesome that's more of a NEW! starburst.

 

Surely, it is the star if you posted and a spot was other new content

We'll be resolving this inconsistency soon as we're improving our content discovery features