It's interesting that things you create for one purpose can be turned into something else entirely by "culture". In this case, the primary reason for the addition of stars on Github was to make it easier to keep track of things you found interesting or useful. Their manual currently introduces stars like this: "Starring makes it easy to find a repository or topic again later."
But having many stars indicates popularity, and popularity indicates quality, and Github is used as a resumé…
When combined these factors turn the stars into a kind of currency, and brings in all the problems facing any system that handles any kind of currency. This may or may not have been Github's intention from the start, but it seems like they haven't really adapted their systems to treat access to starring powers like the access to currency it de facto is.
So be careful when you design things: the way they're used in the real world can transform something innocent into a big problem for all involved.
If stars were really for bookmarking, the solution would be simple: don't display total stars publicly. But we have browser bookmarks for this, and there is a way to subscribe to repo updates which is much more granular than a star. Taken together this suggests that the star function was always designed as a popularity contest.
It's interesting that things you create for one purpose can be turned into something else entirely by "culture". In this case, the primary reason for the addition of stars on Github was to make it easier to keep track of things you found interesting or useful. Their manual currently introduces stars like this: "Starring makes it easy to find a repository or topic again later."
But having many stars indicates popularity, and popularity indicates quality, and Github is used as a resumé…
When combined these factors turn the stars into a kind of currency, and brings in all the problems facing any system that handles any kind of currency. This may or may not have been Github's intention from the start, but it seems like they haven't really adapted their systems to treat access to starring powers like the access to currency it de facto is.
So be careful when you design things: the way they're used in the real world can transform something innocent into a big problem for all involved.