New Users creating New Articles
It's not possible to create an article without first doing some number of edits under one's new user ID - even if one is an experienced wiki editor, using wikimedia software routinely on other projects, and has furthermore made many anonymous contributions to wikipedia. One must also wait several days.
On the English Wikipedia, an editor can open an account and create a new article as their first contribution a minute later. I just looked at one to be sure.
When did that change? I distinctly remember having to accumulate 10 edits under my spiffy new user ID, and wait 3 days.
The 10 edits and 4 days is required only "to move pages, edit semi-protected pages, and upload files or upload a new version of an existing file", not to create an article. That can be done by any registered user, with their very first edit. See en:WP:AUTOCONFIRM.
That depends on what the new editor brings to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not the only place, and is very far from the best place, to learn how to write. Although it is not a large percentage of newbies, some newbies come here already equipped to write an article that is better in content and writing style than the average Wikipedia article. A paper that earns a B at a decent college is better than the average Wikipedia article. Good newbie writers will eventually learn whatever they don't know about wiki markup and Wikipedia style conventions; experienced editors can fix these kind of mistakes until the newbies learn.
True. Which is why I'd prefer to encourage newbies to look at similar articles before creating one. I suspect most people bright enough to write a decent article are bright enough to figure out how to use the formatting code which already exists in a similar article. The problem is with us because instead of suggesting that obvious approach, we tell them to read endless material about how to do anything and everything from scratch. I'm not sure I could create an Infobox from memory myself - I always search-cut-paste-change one of the sort I want. Doesn't everyone? (I don't memorize baseball statistics either, thanks for asking.)
The thing is, most of the 'training material' might be suitable if one were training for a (paid) career, but we shouldn't self-limit Wikipedia to be the province of only those who can and want to do this as a full-time occupation. imo, trying to come up with a WYSIWYG interface misses the point - someone still has to know what it is they want to create. Which generally means seeing something in an existing article. So copy that article's code! The first thing on the to-do list should be to replace the current nonsense with useful descriptions for the hover-cursor messages in the wiki markup box. You may as well hang out a sign: We Hate Non-Nerds! and be done with it. Fix the obvious first instead of looking for endless ways to spend more money and time. This. Isn't. Rocket. Science. A few descriptions would solve the problem for 90% of the people. (I really can't believe no staff or Admin has ever noticed that. That tells you a lot, right there.)