Hacker News Reader

It's a new account. (think "Oh, he's green at that")

Ah, I see. I thought it was a reference to the red-green colour metaphor of + and -, friend and foe, and so forth.

Have been a long time reader, just signed up a few days ago. Was wondering what the green meant at first too.

Should we be drawing more or less attention to newcomers? The green is more obvious than the default gray.

I think it's ironic to draw attention to newcomers' submissions - and it might be something that malefactors would look into gaming.

On the other hand, the point of such features has always been to emulate the "I'm new in traffic - cut me some slack and keep an extra eye out for me" bumper sticker. And this outweighs the con, to me.

But it's something that's only been done on forums - bulletin boards if you will. As old as it seems, it looks like a novel approach by pg in the comments site medium.