what do the stars mean?

hiya, the stars are a rating provided by mylot, now people can ate you and you can rate them!:)

The star means your reputation in Mylot.
It shows how much mylot members like your discussions and when they like you, they will rate "+" for you and every day like that, your star goes up.
And you did a good job, with "9". Unluckily, i am just "3".
But anyway congratulate to your work friend!!!

Good Morngin BigMomma,

Good news, you are back to being a "10" again. This also happened to me so I wrote to mylot inquiring why I went from a 10 to a 9. I was sure that I was receiving negative ratings for my reputation to have dropped. Here is the quote that I have cut & pasted here for your to read.
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QUOTE:
Every day we receive inquiries and read discussions about why your myLot reputations have changed. Some of these inquiries and discussions blame other users for a reputation decline by suggesting that one user rated them negatively on all of their posts.

The purpose of this Alert is to stress that we have taken precautions to significantly minimize the impact of rouge users harming your myLot reputation by repeatedly rating you negatively. In fact, this kind of behavior will only harm the user who does the inappropriate negative rating. To be clear, it is impossible for one rogue user to significantly damage the myLot reputation of another user.

These precautions have been in place from the beginning. Your myLot reputation is truly a measure of how you are perceived by the myLot community as a whole, not by just a handful of users.

So please keep this in mind when you myLot reputation changes or when you rate the actions of other users.
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It is still a mystery of how mylot comes up with our reputations. I think the main key is to keep posting and to have fun.

I'm not sure why you ended up down to a 9, as you seem to be a good & honorable person. I also noticed that our mutual friend somehow bounced down to a 9. I think it's someone who was just being dumb & malicious & giving out negative ratings for no reason.

Anyway, the star ratings is determined by other MyLot members clicking on the + on the right to raise it, or the - to lower it on you for your discussions, & your replies to them. There is a section about the ratings & suggestions in the MyLot information. I don't think it has much, if any, effect on the amount earned (which is mainly from replying with quality posts).