In the modal for changing the visibility of a repo, when switching it from public to private, it says:
> You will permanently lose: All stars and watchers of this repository.
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When the repository goes private, GitHub doesn't retain stars because they would be invalid; you can't star a repo you can't see, so those records would be meaningless. It could store them and "replace" them should the repo go public again, but then the repo could be very different from what the user starred in the first place.
> You will permanently lose: All stars and watchers of this repository.
---
When the repository goes private, GitHub doesn't retain stars because they would be invalid; you can't star a repo you can't see, so those records would be meaningless. It could store them and "replace" them should the repo go public again, but then the repo could be very different from what the user starred in the first place.