Comment by luckylion
5 years ago
I've seen quite a few people market themselves by saying how many stars they have on github, and some even started putting something like "If you find this useful, please star it" in their documentation. It's not quite "like, share & subscribe" yet, but it's on the way. Any public metric will be optimized for, I guess.
Starring a project increases visibility because anyone who follows the person who started it will see it too. It is a question of marketing.
Why should malware writers be the only ones who's code goes viral, huh? /s