No, I think people still want to trade with a newbie... especially if he accept using an escrow. Usually newbie didn't want to accepting escrow and didn't have have any reputation on his account, it's why people didn't want to trade with a newbie.
This is only suggestion and has not been implemented yet on this forum, so this is incorrect reason if you think people will scared after read this thread.
Are you sure about this? I think you should check service section once again. What about Chipmixer? Chipmixer was launch their campaign from 2017 and till now their haven't change the pay rate and the slots. According to last payment from Chipmixer is 4.07782635 BTC, do you think Chipmixer will keep paying around 4 BTC for signature campaign, If signature campaign in this forum is not have traffic and not profiting for them?
I will say that this forum is easy if you have worked hard on it and it's part of you, But very difficult for freshers because of how old members treat them with merit.
Please, never say Merit system is make difficult to newbies, mostly people joining this forum to get money only. What do you think if the newbies don't care about the rank and his purpose is want to discuss about bitcoin only? I believe they will never said merit system is make difficult for them. The purpose of merit system is to force members to create high quality post, reducing spam, and also reducing people want to get easy profit from here without learning bitcoin or forum.
Do we should judge this sites based on Alexa rank? Satoshi is creator of bitcoin and this forum, so you should judge from bitcoin aspect too. Bitcoin is the king of cryptocurrency (always on top 1 even when bitcoin in major dump/downtrend), the most valuable and worthies from all cryptocurrency. Bitcoin survive for 10 years and still counting. Bitcointalk.org always on top 1 forum from other best cryptocurrency forum [1] [2]