Before I ever flew LX, I had an important question, so I went to post there, and they have an interesting concept there: you can specify when starting a thread "Newbie Question." I liked that. Highlighting that in advance I felt insured I didn't get burned by others, and I'm an "experienced" poster! If more forums had that, I feel people might be nicer when they know in advance, this is a newbie question.
AA has a thread, I believe, that's simply a newbie mega-thread, that allows newbies to ask any and every question relating to AA. I used that, and never got flamed. That has its pros and cons. The pros are the understanding that this is for newbies. The con is that this is a MEGAthread. It needs cleanup constantly. If my question is missed, it might be missed, and would need to be reposted.
But I really like the LX idea. If we could always allow threads to be pre-empted with "newbie question," combined with an expanded ambassador program, giving many of the larger forums ambassadors, we'd go a long way of ensuring a friendlier atmosphere for newbies on FT.
I guess my idea would summed up as: Add the LX feature, increase the ambassador program, and make sure ambassadors are on the look out for threads tagged "newbie question."
Remember, someone can be a "FlyerTalk Posting Legend," be GS, HON, TPL, Gold.. you name it. But if I (let's assume all those apply to me) have never flown AA or posted in their forum, then I'm still a newbie in the AA forum, even though I have 50K posts and have been a member for 10 years!