I have always thought of starred movies not as necessarily "the best of the best" (as the
official definition puts it), but rather a small sample of what speedrunning is about. A bit like:
Newcomer: "There are thousands of TASes here! This is quite overwhelming. Which one should I watch first?"
Us: "Try these, they are really cool."
In other words, starred runs are more like representative runs for the site, rather than just a "top n list". I think Bisqwit's original definition (in the original post of this thread) is along those lines:
"Special stars are movies that are particularly impressing, and worth being presentational material for this site."
That being said, I really have to question if a 3-hour TAS, or even a 1-hour TAS, is such a good representative. If these are "check these cool ones first, to see what this is all about" runs, I think 3 hours is way too much. For that end, I'd say 10 minutes or less should be a goal, 20 minutes at the very most for extraordinarily cool or famous games.
Just my opinion.