Here's what Bob had to say after he'd done it:
"There was no way to just turn 'em off, that I could find. I hesitated to delete the group without doing some research... so first I set all the upper groups to require 10,000 posts, which made everyone a Newbie, so I just blanked out the text and stars and all. Seems to work. Admins got reduced to 3 stars."
At least I think that's what he did. I wanted them to go away because as I said, they didn't represent much of anything that any of us knew about, and sometimes they were intimidating to new folks here on the Forum. That is -- what do I have to do to get a few starts like you folks do, and what privileges do I get when I've got some?
So now if you've got stars it's because you're an administrator with all of the rights and privileges thereto appertaining. Recognise that phrase?