Apparently it was a technical kludge to allow Google searching by author. There has been some discussion at the place where issues are reported.
Kludge indeed; and it is entirely unnecessary: Wei Dai's script already makes it easy to search a user's comment history.
I again urge those responsible to restore the prior appearance of the site (they can do what they want to the non-visible internals).
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, even in Discussion, it goes here.