As a middle-of-the-road-newbie (compared to a newbie-newbie), I would find a newbie section incredibly useful. Though, I do not believe that I have ever not posted because I feared a negative votes recoil; but I would like to congregate with other newbies (of various nebie status) and comment on each others' code and help one another out. And, it would also be a nice place for more experienced Perl programmers to visit and point out tips-n-tricks to us (maybe even reminisce about when they just started the long quest to becoming a Perl hacker).
But, I am not really sure how many newbies do not post b/c of a fear of losing XP. I would conjecture that the real fear is looking stupid in front of our peers. No one wants to be the newbie that asks the question that is reaped, or the newbie who did not do enough research. I mean, you get a lot of fairly advanced questions in Seekers of Perl Wisdom (for example this and this), and when you are posting a relatively "simple" one that has just been vexing you for so long, you do feel intimidated no matter how applicable your question may be or how much its responses may help others (or the newbie that finds the answer to his question on his own 5 minutes after posting -- that one was me ).
All in all, this is a great site and can only get better. I think a newbie section would be a great addition, but I do not feel that PerlMonks suffers any loss of quality by not having it.

Just my $.02,
Jeremy