Welcome to the New Neo Ark Cradle!

[~Mana~]

Because it's based on your usergroup. As you gain posts, technically you're promoted through usergroups and allocated stars based on that group. As Ark's group is a fixed group, being an Administrator, he's locked at 7 regardless of his post count, whereas Wanderer and Raku are still on the progression system and therefore are on the ninth usergroup, giving them nine stars.

Ultimately, the number of stars for a usergroup can be customised, so they could easily bolster an admins star count to 10 to balance it out but I'd assume they haven't gotten that far yet.

i know this is...vain of me, but would there be anyway to get rid of the stars? Or at least have an option as to whether or not you want them visible (Either on just your posts, or everyone's posts.)? They stick out too much for my tastes.

There shouldn't be, no. The only setting that would change that is a global setting in the ACP, which would remove everyone stars completely. So unfortunately, you'll have to live with it.