The ever rising barrier to entry of Mathematics SE

Question

Recently, I have been going over the accounts of a few users (using since 2 years or more) here and sorting questions by newest. I found that, usually, most people's oldest questions or answers weren't that good but then the quality of their posts gradually improved over time. For example, consider you can see my own oldest questions and compare them to my recent ones (most of them suck, feel free to downvote, close, delete if you think they are as terrible as I do).

It seems to me now that there is a critical mass of long users of Mathematics SE who can show better if not equal quality of presentation of a level similar to that of my recent questions. Since, we have accumulated so much experience in this site, I think we are undervaluing the difficulty of newbies in getting used to the site customs and becoming a quality participants.

I believe it is a very small minority of users who can post at the current level of quality that we ask for in their first post itself. So, if we are to think about increasing the quality of participation, I think the question should go from "how to filter out newbies" to "how can we better onboard newbies and teach them the skills needed to be quality contributors long term".

If we don't do this, then eventually oldest users would stop using/ newer user would move on to other sites if there ever comes slightly better options, in end effect, this site would die of with all its activity.

This, in practice, would involve teaching the essential skills and style of SE to the newbies.

Do you agree or disagree? If you agree, what changes can we make as a community to better our onboarding?

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Also, here is the attitude and opinions of people on this matter from an SE whose population reduced by more than half over the years.

Answer 1

Such a healthy and broad discussion in comment section prompted me to write an answer after giving a lot of thought.

In my view/understanding, basically there are 2 sorts of extreme/pole that exist when it comes to MSE.

Pole $\bf1$:
Want to encourage more new users to the site.
Do not have any problems with an easy/homework/"low quality" posts.
Encourage near-transforming-the-post edits to save the question or to encourage/welcome the new users to the site.
[Origin]: Generally, those who joined MSE later.
[Status]: Already quite some leeway given when compared to the original standards, but, want more.
[Consequences Positive]:

1. Increased traffic and activity on the site, thus, longer/everlasting youth (immortality?) of the site.
   
2. Growth of the population of the MSE community as more users will be added and perhaps increasingly so.
3. Scope of the site will be increased. Not just repository of limited questions but tending towards universal set of questions and concepts and applications and discussions, etc.
4. All in all it will tend to become like close to StackOverflow.

Pole $\bf2$:
Expect new users (even $1^{st}$ post) to strictly follow the community guidelines outright. [The post should be well-formatted with proper context and mathjax included.]
Want to see/encourage "quality" post for a "good repository".
Encourage stick approach to teach new users the etiquettes thus, discouraging major edits.
[Origin]: Generally, those who were from the beginning.
[Status]: Feel the site has turned for worse and needs to be restored to its original glory.
[Consequences Positive]:

1. A lot fewer questions giving space for the "quality" questions to get the light and thus will be engaged in more than being missed/neglected.
2. Quality participation (near exclusively) will (slightly) increase (after seeing a massive decrease) thus also encouraging better solutions and better discussions to take place.
3. No longer so many mods will be needed and neither the (then fewer) mods will be so over-worked.
4. The site will see fewer posts which are really "unique" thus making MSE a library of questions that one won't find elsewhere.
5. All in all will come close to becoming MathOverflow.

Some of the suggestions yet:

1. Having another site for easier questions.
2. Switching to Pole 1.
3. Switching to Pole 2.

My suggestion:
The major chunk of the problem lies in the level of the question.
[Perspective 1]: You're a high school student or a graduate and knows that MSE is the best and so will get/find great answers to their problems but the site is so strict I can't ask anything there.
[Perspective 2]: I'm a research scholar or a PhD holder and I like to or want to help others with their problems but obviously I don't find myself interested in telling someone how to tackle with the most basest of the questions but what to do, finding questions worth my time is like finding a needle in a haysack! I'm obviously not interested in that sort of labour.

[Solution]: This in my honest opinion is a WIN-WIN and most suited for site like MSE but is a bit demanding (of the MSE staff). It's as follows:

While it is not easy to classify the questions as easy or medium or hard but that can happen automatically! We need that the OP also mention there level of education every time they ask a question (or if they want have a default setting too). Thus, they'll have something like this:
$\circ$ I'm a highschool student.
$\circ$ I'm a graduate (student).
$\circ$ PhD or higher level of qualification.
The OP will select one among the above options and then posting as usual.
Finally, in the "Filter" we'll have another column, namely, "Qualification" with the above 3 checkboxes and option to select one or more.
Problem Solved!

[Consequences]:

1. Immortal, growing site with increased traffic.
2. Site will become one-stop solution for all maths problems.
3. All the "high quality"/difficult/expert questions will be clearly visible.
4. Both the more and less qualified will have fun with maths.

How it addresses some other problems?

1. Editing: Now people closer to Pole 2 will engage less with Pole 1 and users closer to pole 1 are happy to make grand edits.

Drawbacks:

1. Hard to implement as it's not something even mods can't implement if they wish. The staff needs to be coaxed.
2. Sometimes highschool students or graduates come up with difficult/"high quality"/expert questions which are likely to be then neglected by the users closer to pole 2.
3. Someone despite claiming higher qualification might ask easy questions or make the false claim in the first place.

But the drawbacks 2. and 3. are easily solvable via moderators/community participation.
For 2., since every question has the option to be given it's level of qualification and not solid/labelled upon the user, so the community can easily change the question's description from 1 to another.
For 3., while former half is addressed by the above point, the latter half will be addressed by the mods if the user if found to be cheating multiple times (as it happens existingly).

Thank you for your patient reading. :-)