Hacker News Reader

Comment by matsemann | Hacker News Reader

Just curious, but why star them at all? I've starred 11 repos in my many years on github, to bookmark some specific projects. But others in my feed star projects daily and have over a thousand projects in their star list. I'm curious to why. Will you ever check them out again? Isn't the list now so long it's hard to find things in it?

View on HN

While maybe it's not very useful for your own bookmarking, there are other useful effects:

- Saying "I think it's neat" internet points is kindof a nice kudos. It's relatively pleasing to see some stars on your repositories.

- It's an indication of popularity/usage. If you have to rely on some dependency, "choose the one with the most stars" will probably give you a good result for next to no effort.

- In terms of social networking: I can then see what repositories others have starred.

I use it to bookmark but also as a "thank you". I'm sure most devs would much prefer a star than a helpful contribution to the repo or a donation.

I use it as both a bookmark so I can find a repo again in future, but also as a kind of "I think this project is great" thumbs up. It's pretty clear that that's a common reason for stars.

Ya, exactly. It can help give the project author some indication that a certain number of folks are interested in their project.

fwiw, I use github stars also as simple bookmark list, with about 100 stars.

When one of my (quite obscure) repos get stars, I feel joy. I like to think starring someone else's repo has that same reaction for them, too.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com