Having spent many years supporting users (of HPC) with very widely varying skill and confidence levels, a few comments -
New users much prefer to find information anonymously, that is they look in the wiki first, they may search the forum and only then, if they have not given up, do they post a message asking for help. Our wiki has a heap of good, useful information but it also has a lot of stuff that is quickly identified as being grossly out of date, thats a bad message to new users !
I don't think the forum sections are very important in terms of getting a message responded to. I rarely look in individual sections, its the Recent list that appears on the right hand side that I read and occasionally post to. I believe that list should be longer to give a new post a longer life.
My impression is that here, generally, beginner's questions are usually answered and answered very well. There may be some exceptions but I don't think having them in a new beginner's section would help.
If we want to help new users and, importantly, make a good initial impression, then its the wiki that needs attention. We need to be more aggressive in updating the wiki ! And, as Mark mentions, "beginners" signposts .....
Davo