From a new persons perspective I will say I find the post count of 50 to be unnecessarily high. I'm a member of plenty of other forums that have posting restrictions but only of between about 10-20/25 posts and they seem to work. A count at 50 kinda lends itself to needing to spam the forum and bump old threads if you want to get your count up.
As a newbie I can't really offer advice etc since I am here soaking up information rather than having any to give. So unless I want to post "looks great", "well done", "that's impressive" 50 times it's gonna take months or longer to get there.
Behind the scenes I am active though spending hundreds - thousands of dollars with members of this forum, supporting everyone here with my commerce. Yet I still can't post in the Cargo Hold, seems kinda strange.
Anyhow, as far as the OP goes, in my 3 odd months as a member plus a couple more lurking before joining up, I have only ever seen people be amazingly supportive and helpful to other members - both old and new, on here. I have seen in other hobbies and experienced it, where newbies ask questions or for help and the thread just gets ignored. Yet an old timer asks something and they come out of the woodwork to help them. Refreshingly that is not something I have noticed here.
This site is home to some of the most generous and kind people I have ever encountered (especially on the interwebs). Like everyone has said, take the bad in stride and maybe with a little humor even. Sweeping generalizations like calling everyone here a clown is a poor attitude, and in this hobby, I've found it is all about attitude. 
