To me the stars seem more similar to likes, follows, and subs.. a popularity metric for social media. And unless it spells that they're big, it actually gives

To me the stars seem more similar to likes, follows, and subs.. a popularity metric for social media. And unless it spells that they're big, it actually gives me a rather negative vibe. Assuming I'm hiring for a technical role, I'd be unimpressed to see someone attempt to flaunt the 10k karma they scored on HN or the 150 followers they got on twitter. Also as others point out, if you don't see what their contribution is, it seems even more flaunty. "Talked to a guy with 100k karma"? It's pretty easy to sneak a few low-impact commits into big and popular projects.. (speaking as someone who's got a commit or five e.g. in Mozilla Firefox)