I think this would be an excellent solution. Combine it with some semantic similarity analysis, and the vast majority of newbie questions could be replaced with "Here's a link to a pre-written answer that almost certainly addresses what you want".

They already do that analysis and show similar questions while you're asking a question. You can say "well they should do it better" (and I'm sure they try), but the whole beauty of the Q&A model is combining the strengths of computers and humans. Computers are better at organizing and storing tons of information, but humans are much better at figuring out what other humans are really asking.