So all those people got notifications and then some of them looked further at the notifications and then engaged. Now those people won't get those notifications and won't engage. Most of these people won't notice they don't get these notifications. They won't resubscribe. They're lost forever. This is kind of like losing your email list.
Your comment reads like you don't understand how a community works.
If the measure of community is “people who get my emails, and wouldn’t notice if they stopped getting my emails”, then yea, I guess we just disagree about what a community is.
I’m on an email list for marketing message for a hotel I stayed at last year. TIL that I’m part of their community.
If you focus solely on the getting notifications part. But the core part of any community is the ability to broadcast news to them. If you remove the ability to broadcast news and falicate communication between members then the community fades. Especially, if it's remove.
Not all members of a community are extremely active, some aren't that active at all if you remove the ability to let the less active people know stuff that may be of interest to them then obivously it'll damage a community.
You don't get notifications after starring a repo, they're only a measure of how popular the repo is. The repo did legitimately lose its Watchers, but the author seems a lot more concerned about losing (and getting back) the stars.
Your comment reads like you don't understand how a community works.