I see folks mentioning going back to their dormant LFM accounts. The Metabrainz Foundation has a project ListenBrainz, a more open FOSS style version; if you’re going to spin some scrobbling cycles maybe check it out:
(I stopped scrobbling years ago, privacy concerns)
Stars are just someone’s bookmark (me included) because there’s no simple “bookmark this because I’ll forget in an hour and want to look at it later when I have time.” If one trusts Stars, you’re literally trusting a bookmark that I didn’t put more than 2 seconds of thought into clicking because I have a bad memory. Many I know do the same.
I go straight to code history, show me what the commits look like. One can derive a lot about the project based on just the way the commit messages are written before looking at the code being changed. How the code is changed over time (process, communication, methods, etc.) adds more layers to the qualitative observation. I move on to Issues when I want to see how the devs interact with the users having problems, which is another story.
The dichotomy here is you can’t be famous hosting exploits on smaller forges. Gotta be on the big platforms where you can be starred and forked for social media cred to make news stories to impress your friends. IIRC I think HeartBleed (maybe ShellShock?) was the tip of this popularity iceberg…
One I snack on with unsalted tortilla chips, the other I do not. But now I have to try it.