Thats the exact reason why the internet is at our disposal, a newbie doesn't really need to ask any direct questions to a higher ranked user, such newbie could easily get answers speedily on the internet, no one is under any obligation to answer questions in here, this isn't a school.

You can rank up without being s total bitcoin expert, you could have other strong points, that you'll impact to other on the forum, without it necessarily being about bitcoin, it could be about forum growth, for example numerous users have put in efforts to create notifications bots, userscipts, statistics etc that make the forum more interesting and easy to use, this has earned them numerous merits that aided their rank up.

If it was only about the bitcoin, we'll have just one board and it'll be the bitcoin discussion board.