Thanks to @Mittineague @cpradio @purldator for providing your views.
I believe every community will have 2 kinds of new users.
1st category of new users - have no clue about the basic features like posting. Let’s assume someone born in 1950s who are new to internet. You can help them with emails and first time PMs.
2nd category of new users - knew how to use basic features but still have questions if certain topics are relevant in some places and they are basically shy to participate until they are confident. These are the people who feel confident after conversing with someone. They want to avoid the embarrasment of being wrong among others. Let’s assume students, people new to a place.
All my ideas may not help the category 1 but it will surely help category 2.
I have been testing with a public category called “help” in my community. Still I get questions in email about many things before they post. FAQ and banner messages cannot solve everything. I understand this may not be scalable but the alternative is losing the audience.
Thanks @sam @codinghorror for the replies as well. As I explained, as a community manager I think from retaining and growing my audience whatever it takes…in an ideal world everything should be scalable but in reality we may have to take alternate routes.