My first real thought when reading this thread was, "Hmm...strange that he's not orange" about a few different usernames I recognized.

I think I have to come down on the side of not liking the feature, but I'm not sure I'm right about my reasons for not liking it. I've always thought one of the great things about reddit and HN is that identity of the poster is understated. It's not anonymous, but it's possible to read comments without seeing the user who posted them. Every comment thus stands alone and is judged on its own merits. "Bad" users get a fresh start with every post, and "good" users have to say something interesting or not at all. Now, I have some sort of stamp of approval the moment I post.

Then again, most people are idiots, and if software can make it more apparent who the idiots are, maybe it'll make it easier to tolerate them when they start showing up here in larger numbers.