README quality vs actual code quality why we star repos

You can have the cleanest codebase in the world, but if a developer has to scroll past three paragraphs of fluff just to find the quickstart command, the repo is getting closed. The last few repos I starred all had one thing in common: I could copy-paste the install command and see it running locally in under sixty seconds. Beyond that it's all about trust in the maintainer.

Have you ever un-starred a project because the repo went completely silent after a big launch?