> I never understood why stars are public in the first place.

We star because we like the code, the idea, the execution and the maybe the impact of the project. And it's encouragement. You star a project you pushing it forward. This is the human experience. We are not machines worshiping code. We care about what others think and this is why github is different.

> Of course instead of hiding the stars it might be better to add a private similar feature instead.

Agreed. Hiding means giving more space to anonymous users do we want that?

> I'm using GitHub to develop open source software.

Same. And i am not coding for myself i also need other to be part of what i am building and that's supposed to be part of the mission. Increase interactively. Instead this feature does the opposite.