We are currently working on our "new users experience". As a part of that, we have stated that we want to be more welcoming to new users and try to guide them during their first steps on the site. this involves both being polite and gentle when their first post has quality issues, but also telling new users who have a good first question exactly that: that their question is a good first question.
In light of this, I was wondering if we could revisit our stance on having answers focused purely on answering the question and not having anything beyond things related to the answer. I'm not saying "allow answers that provide no meaningful solution to the asker's problem", but rather "if someone asks a good first question and you have an answer to that question, it's okay to make a remark about the quality of their question in the answer". This is something which is done on a number of newer communities like Puzzling, Worldbuilding, PPCG and likely others as well. It does not detract anything from the quality of the answer, but it can encourage new users with good questions to stick around.
You're probably wondering "why not place this in a comment?", and there is a case to be made for putting this in comments. However, recently the comment section has been rebranded to a "suggest improvements" section, which is a scope where "hey, welcome and good question" does not quite fit into. The improvements section can definitely be used for feedback on questions with quality issues, but I don't think it's quite as good a fit for "hey, good job" comments, especially for new users.
Finally, while this is also what upvotes are meant for, upvotes are somewhat more obscure for new users. Fluff greetings in the style of "Welcome and good job on making a good first question" convey the same message, but are much clearer for new users.
I'm hoping to start a discussion on this topic. Having words of encouragement when you make a good first impression can definitely encourage users to stick around and continue to use the site. It's good to have a site where you can get answers to a wide range of programming questions, but we should take care to remain welcoming to new users.