I believe a large part of the problem you cite, YoDude, stems from forum structure. Community should be the very first section (General next to last under Talk IMO), and new user introduction threads should all be located here, NOT under General. That funnels new users into a community-focused area, which should be the default "home" for forum-users.

That's an incredibly easy fix that for whatever reasons has never happened. The next steps become increasingly difficult (as some, like adding additional context to Active Topics, involve coding) but I believe structure is where to start.