I'll add my thoughts as a newbie.
When I joined I read the stickies and used the dashboard, but being completely new to the FF world found it somewhat overwhelming. I did a search and found and posted in an already live thread that seemed most relevant to my query and received some useful feedback. I'm not sure that a newbie thread wouldn't just become another long sticky to read, meaning people would end up still posting in already live threads or starting new ones anyway. I appreciate for those 'in the know' it can be frustrating to answer the same questions repeatedly but I've found everyone to be helpful and polite and have seen no evidence of flaming etc thus far.