1. Starring Repositories
When you visit a useful repository, you can star it by clicking the star in the top right corner of the repository page. A star is not only a compliment to the repository owner, but also serves as a bookmark of sorts for the repository.
On your profile page, click the Stars tab to see a list of all the repositories that you’ve starred. This list is viewable by others who happen upon your profile page. Exploring the repositories others have starred is a great way of discovering interesting new projects.
If you’re curious about which repositories have the most stars on GitHub, use GitHub search (https://git.io/fhdkx) to sort users by follower count. This shortened URL shows the top starred repositories on GitHub.
You may be curious about which of your repositories have the most stars. Right now, you can’t list your repositories in order of stars. However, one of the author’s visualization website at https://profile-summary-for-github.com/user/haacked provides a nice visualization of your profile and includes which of your repositories have the most stars (see Figure 16-5). Just replace the username haacked with your own to see your profile.
2. Following Users
When you visit the GitHub profile of another user, a big Follow button appears underneath the profile picture. Click the Follow button to subscribe to notifications about the user’s activity in your dashboard at https://github.com. Who you follow also feeds into GitHub’s recommendation system. For example, if someone you follow stars a public repository, that repository may show up in the Discover repositories section of your dashboard as a recommendation.
You can see all the users you follow by clicking the Following tab of your home page. You can see all the people that follow you by clicking the Followers tab.
If you’re curious about who are the most followed people on GitHub, you can use GitHub search (https://git.io/fh7P7) to sort users by follower count. This shortened URL shows the top followed people on GitHub. It may come as no surprise that Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux and Git, is the most followed person on GitHub.
Source: Guthals Sarah, Haack Phil (2019), GitHub for Dummies, Wiley.