The intended purpose of stars is bookmarking. "Starring a repository allows you to keep track of projects that you find interesting, even if you aren't associated with the project." [1]<p>However, I rarely browse my list of starred repos. I use star as a way to show my appreciation. It is sort of "Like" button for me.<p>[1] https://help.github.com/articles/about-stars/
Primarily bookmarking. I just really wish you could create categories for your own stars (similar to how you can create your own playlists on YouTube for example), because it's really annoying having everything from "just something fun" to "actually useful for work" in just one big star pile that you can barely do anything about.
I voted for bookmarking, but I use it for a bit of both, confusingly.<p>I feel like what I'm missing is some sort of mechanism for privately bookmarking repositories, perhaps with optional tagging or personal notes. I usually star a repo with a particular purpose in mind, e.g. "oh this could be an interesting way to solve problem X at work" or "ah finally, an MIT-licensed alternative to Project Y". As it stands, there's not really any good way to store that kind of info.<p>(On a related note, I don't really like the fact that your starred repos can't be made private.)
I rarely can keep up with/remember bookmarks so I usually will fork a repo that I "like", even if I dont do anything with the code. This may not work for everyone, but in my case seeing it in my repo list happens much more frequently than visiting my list of bookmarks.
Good point, almost like an "I approve for use" type of situation, I began using Watch for a while but didn't seem to get the same notifications. I do however wish there was some alternative view to your star(ed) collection (breakup by tech/domain) because you can't really organize. Something similar to explore (<a href="https://github.com/explore" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/explore</a>) but your own items based from what you have approved.
I feel stupid. I never even thought of it as a bookmarking tool. When I have to bookmark, I just bookmark the repo page in the browser. I never thought of GitHub stars as anything more than a "Kudos, Good job" tool.
I've replied to someones comment with this already, I think it deserves more attention though. For those of you using Stars for bookmarking check out <a href="http://astralapp.com/" rel="nofollow">http://astralapp.com/</a> for organisational purposes.
I give a repo a star if it's something I use or think there's a pretty good chance I'll use in the future (bookmarking). It also means I like to stay up-to-date with their development, as least at the surface level. I built <a href="http://sibbell.com" rel="nofollow">http://sibbell.com</a> for exactly that purpose - it will notify you any time a repo that you star (or watch) has a new release. I don't like to "watch" repos on GitHub though because on a project of any size, you get flooded with emails...
Interesting poll. I can only imagine you have a use case for building something. I'm in the same boat.<p>If anybody is interested on working on a Github star related project with me, let me know. It'll have a huge impact on how individuals use Github. I intend on this being for-profit with Stripe payments.<p>I've been working on it in stealth as my pet project but it's closing in on being publicly available.<p>It uses Laravel 4.2, MySQL, supervisord, and beanstalkd for those interested.<p>Contact info in my profile.
I guess bookmarking primarily. I'm either going to use it or I'm currently using it.<p>I think "Watching" a repo is more like "Liking" it, since that give you updates on the repo's status. But it stinks since you can't fine-tune what updates you get.
I don't use them at all. I like github for contributing, but I don't really buy into the "social" of it aspect beyond that. And my browser history / address bar completion have substituted bookmarks for me.
If I want to bookmark something, I just use the bookmarking features of my browser.<p>In which case, I generally only star things I like (and even then).
bookmarking +1
I use <a href="https://github.com/Sliim/helm-github-stars" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/Sliim/helm-github-stars</a> to browse my stars
None. I never click on stars.<p>Projects that I care about have developer mailing lists, and mailing lists where people review and discuss patches. I subscribe to those.<p>Projects that don't have that and only rely on GitHub are toy/non-serious projects that I don't care about.<p>For bookmarking I have actual bookmarks.