IMHO,
letting the users dictate the rules is always a loser for all.
Stars are a report card and also allow new users know if a poster
's content can be trusted or not
If a person has few stars for a good reason allowing him to shine others off by hiding the score is not right
Example if someone is always posting not to give input put is doing a marketing game with their content he should not be able to hide what the others learned the hard way and degraded that users star count
What good is a grading system if those being graded can hide that score and continue to be a lower grade user ?
