7 ms·

I think it's like a "upvote" thing which shows whether historically users have found the repo interesting. Even if you hide stars, there needs to be a way for t

• rpdillon 2y ago
  You don't need to crowdsource everything. I've never used stars as a good metric because it's literally zero effort. It's anybody who happens by just stars it, So all you can really conclude from star count is that this is interesting to this number of people. Two metrics that I think correlate extremely highly with quality: The number of commits in the repository and the date of the most recent commit. I've used a metric based on those two inputs for the past 15 years to evaluate repos and I am not disappointed. Depending on the nature of the project, I weigh the two attributes differently. Some projects are arguably, 'done', and so the date of the most recent commit is not very important in that case.
  • michaelmior 2y ago
    I think "interesting to this number of people" is not a meaningless metric, but I would agree on the two other metrics you cite.
    • ryandrake 2y ago
      There is a big difference between “highest quality” and “most popular.” Online services constantly confuse the two because it’s easier to measure popularity.
      • michaelmior 2y ago
        I don't disagree. But I think there's at least some positive correlation. The highest quality is unlikely to be the least popular and vice versa.
• LtWorf 2y ago
  Except that most people don't bother starring stuff, so the few who do are drowned by noise of fake stars.