Have 115387 weekly NPM installs, but only 781 stargazers. Why?

I can only talk for myself, but I wouldn't be surprised if others would be similar.

I don't use star as a reward for the developer, but rather as a bookmark.

I star a repository in case I have to do something with the code (or repository) itself: when I modify the code (either to scratch my own itch with a bugfix/missing feature, or to also upstream it), when I need to check the code itself for something, or when I create issues, either to ask for help due to missing documentation, or report a bug. (+1: neodrama repo is also starred, as it brings the nasty-tasty dev dramas. But it's more like a blog, in repo form)

In case a software just works as it should, and I don't have to mess with the code deeply, then I don't star - I see no reason to do so.

Stars are more like bookmarks, even GitHub, or rather Microsoft, has acknowledged this because they gave us personal categories to group them under. I don't use them, I suspect they want to glean more insights from my behavior

Regarding downloads, I would bet some CI systems / builds are the primary source. These don't really count as installations of it's just tests running in CI, imho anyway

npm download numbers are always exceptionally inflated. I'm sure that number serves some purpose, but I've never found them to be a useful metric when I've worked on public packages.

An ancient post [1] for the defunct npm blog offers some details:

> So the count of “downloads” is much larger than the number of people who typed “npm install yourpackage” on any given day.

I'm sure the particulars have changed over time, but directionally, npm download numbers aren't a proxy for "# of developers using my package".

[1]: https://blog.npmjs.org/post/92574016600/numeric-precision-ma...