AFAICT, it's a peer ranking system. So anyone can award stars to anyone else, and your rating is the average of what other folks ranked you as. So if everyone thinks you're a complete tw@t, you get one star. If everythone thinks you're not even worth noticing, you won't get any.
So the system is completely arbitrary, hopelessly open to abuse, and serves no purpose. Unless it's part of Kim's cunning plan to stop newbies from getting savaged by tying us all up in interpersonal attacks on each other.
Yeah, I gave you some just to test the system. I also gave 5 to Brendan which was a big mistake, because I subsequently found out it's a once-only feature. So even if I think Brendan is a toss-pot really, I can't down grade the stars.
I don't know what makes you think you're able to be so rude about this Brendan. I've been looking through this site and he seems to be a nice helpful sensible person. Why not post a bit more in the spirit of things?
I started this thread with zero stars and have to say I am disappointed about my new 5-star status. I was hoping to maintain a clean record since ShipsCat had offered to award me a skull & crossbones once Kim had implemented the feature.