I have to agree with MoM here.
Some new guys are really good and practically naturals.
Other guys just ruin games by doing ... nothing.
I've been in quite a few games where we made an early push, supported each other, and seemed like we were going to win, before the advance stalled in the face of superior numbers. I look at the back to see what units we can scrape together and, lo and behold, there's a guy with 20 storages and he's building more. There's already a bunch of comments from the other (new) players to please help out, and hes ignoring to build some monstrosity like Zenith.
I was in another game where a dude terraformed the bastille complete with ramps, solars and (of course) storages at his starting point. We would probably have won that one too if it wasn't for him dragging us down. I think it's fair to say that if that amount of metal and energy waste had been transformed into units the balance would have completely tipped.
I agree that one should be helpful and tolerant of new players and tactics, but there's some stuff that SIMPLY DOESNT WORK like building 100 solars for the win, or storages, or Bertha first thing on a map like Fairyland. Often guys don't listen when you tell them they are dragging the team down.
Maybe there should be an option for limiting players to a certain experience and / or rank level for multiplayer games, with the bar of entry rising as the size of the game rises. I think that by level 8-10 the guy should know what he's doing enough not to be an anchor.