What's the practical use of a high star count?
"Five-hundred-and-one million, six-hundred-twenty-two thousand, seven-hundred-thirty-one. I am concerned with matters of consequence: I am accurate."
"And what do you do with these stars?"
"What do I do with them?"
"Yes."
"Nothing. I own them."
An example is https://github.com/indexzero/node-portfinder vs https://github.com/sindresorhus/get-port
I have very little interest in most of the differences in features, and the cost of switching is low in the future. So I'll just go with node-portfinder because it has more stars. ( I also notice the forks count is higher)
A quick read of the source, tests, documentation, issues etc provide better information than counting stars in my experience.
If you ever want to process and try and extract some value from those, I recommend this: https://astralapp.com/
People have a marked preference for popular open source software.
* It's a signal of quality even if it isn't always the best signal, and developers won't necessarily allocate the time to investigate the quality of a package on a deep level.
* CYA: more stars indicates more popularity which indicates that your choice to use XYZ with 1000 stars is more defensible than the ABC package with 5.
* It suggests that the package will be maintained and improved rather than abandoned.