Geek Goddess

As of the release of 4.3, WordPress removed the “Formatting” section from the Writing settings. Included in there was the option to turn off WordPress’s default action to convert text emoticons to image smilies. This plugin does the same thing as unchecking the “convert to smilies” box that used to be available via the settings.

Keep Emoticons as Text

Disables the default WordPress option of converting emoticons to image smilies

normen

This plugin adds a button bar to buddypress forum posting textfields. 
Features:
<ul>
<li>Insert bold, italic, blockquote etc.</li>
<li>Insert URLs, Images etc</li>
<li>Insert smilies</li>
<li>Buttons can be shown/hidden via javascript</li>
<li>Uses imgur image uploading service to add images to posts</li>
</ul>

BP Post Buttons

Adds a button bar to buddypress forum posting textfields

Keep Emoticons as Text vs BP Post Buttons