Was it ever a good metric? A star from another account costs nothing and conveys nothing about the sincerity, knowledge, importance or cultural weight of the star giver. As a signal it's as weak as 'hitting that like button'.
replyIf the number of stars are in the thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, that might correlate with a serious project. But that should be visible by real, costly activity such as issues, PRs, discussion and activity.
There was a time when total number of hyperlinks to a site was an amazing metric measuring its quality.
replyYeah, the time between Google appeared, until the time SEO became a concept people chased, a very brief moment of time.
replyat that time having a website took work, while having a github account can be cheaply used to sybil attack/signal marketing
replyThere isn't just "good metric" in vacuum - it was a good metric of exactly the popularity that you mentioned. But stars becoming an object of desire is what killed it for that purpose. Perhaps now they are a "good metric" of combined interest and investment in the project, but what they're measuring is just not useful anymore.
replyYeah, I'd agree with this. I always thought of a star indicating only that a person (or account, generally) had an active interest in another project, either through being directly related or just from curiosity. Which can sort of work as a proxy for interesting, important or active, but not accurately.
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replyA repository with zero stars has essentially no users. A repository with single-stars has a few users, but possibly most/all are personal acquiantances of the author, or members of the project.
replyIt is the meaning of having dozens or hundreds of stars that is undermined by the practice described at the linked post.
I especially love issues automatically "closed due to inactivity" just to keep the number of issues down :V
replySometimes people open issues without proper information. It cant be replicated and nobody else is jumping in that it affects them. You may suspect its something else, maybe with their environment, but if they don't engage what else can you do? Tell them you are closing it and specify what kind of info you need if they ever get around to providing it and it can be reopened.
replyAnd sometimes the maintainer simply doesn't respond to a perfectly acceptable issue due to either the maintainer abandoning the project, not enough maintainers or simple neglect.
reply"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"
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