what's the point of giving a star in a question?

The "stars" simply indicate that someone found the question important or interesting. It alerts the clickers contacts to the question, so maybe they will answer as well. Enough stars can push a question to the front page, to the POPULAR tab there. A LOT of stars may help the question get chosen as "Featured Question" or even be put on "Best of Answers", after review by the staff. Here is the blog that explains it in detail:

http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-d8pH0dcoRKeB12yOcnU...

There's really no point of doing it. But stars are to show wheither or not it has been marked interesting to the person or people. Stars indicate that lots of people have liked the question, or just one person enjoyed the question. If there are many stars to a question, it will show that it is very interesting and popular, which convinces people to view the question themselves.

I don't know if there's any other point but to show others that you thought that question was interesting.

How about I don't give you a star and we call it a day? Ask a better question mofo