I see stars: magnitude
Yup, it's this crazy point system. You get a green for 500 points, gold for a thousand, 2000 gets you a dark gold star. Some of us have been playing with this thing for weeks now, and everytime you participate, it builds your points. Some actions build more points than others.
In IE7 you can hover over the star and it'll tell you the points. When I up'd to 8, that stopped working.