One thing I've been thinking about is the idea of"self-identification". If a person could self-identify as a newbie looking for help, for instance, or as someone who is open to helping other users, we could "badge" them as such.
There are lots of ways this can be done, which is why I've held offcreating a fully-designed system to bring to the community and have instead been thinking about angles.
That would be more useful. To some extent we already do that, but it's
indirect, not obvious or nuanced, and isn't built into the system.