I feel as though I've seen a lot of new-member questions that are (not that surprisingly) less than amazing, and therefore get close votes. I think that's pretty logical, and usually the close votes are accompanied by well written, friendly and constructive comments welcoming the new user and helping them to see how to improve their participation in rpgstackexchange.

What seems less helpful, though, is that their progression to more fully qualified members can be slowed, reducing their interest in persevering, when their question is downvoted, as this reduces their reputation.

I wonder - would it be effective to "shield" new members from reputation hits based on downvotes of their first question? Give them a little extra grace to work out what we're about here before sending them backwards? Or am I misunderstanding how this works so far?