Ask PG: Can you explain the new features?

speculation is rife over here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2434333

n00bs have green names, probably you can only see points on comments if you have enough karma, and so on.

I've seen the speculation; I was hoping that PG might weigh in with some actual facts.

Probably best to just wait until the experiment is over and then explain what was tried, what [seemed to] work and what [seemed not to] work. Especially since some of the changes are having short lives (orange dot).

Just a test to see how my name looks. I've been green names and orange dots. Anything else?