I would recommend for us to create maybe a space for people who were considered newbies (never received any form of upvotes) or people who have been blacklisted by steemstem before. Maybe we can create a channel which acts as a classroom for newbies to simply ask questions regarding their post, requesting help from existing mentors (or honour members) or simply would like to request opinions regarding the topics of their article. I know people would like to have a private one-on-one session with their mentor but sometimes, mentors are not around, so it will lead to a constant harassment of other management's inboxes. If a newbie or previously blacklisted people would be able to prove themselves by producing 3 or more worth upvoted article, then they will simply graduate.
It will be easier for people who are new and do not know who to contact or how to start. After they graduated, they will simply leave (or kicked) out of the channel and the channel can only be accessed by management and people who were added. I'm sure, mentors and other honour members would be more productive this way since they were not assigned to a specific person. It's like we were trying to filter as much as possible people who were trying to plagiarise (intended and unintended alike) and the classroom act like a short informal course of writing before they can be a trusted STEM writer. But then again, our system now is pretty solid so...
I am not sure why such a space would be needed, as what you describe is exactly the role of the HM. Maybe improving the communication with the mentors could be useful or even introducing a back-up mentor. But I am not convinced on the necessity of a dedicated space. Note that mentors are, in my impression, always available so that I am not sure to see a need for this. But maybe could you share some counterexample?
Concerning the levelling thing, we have something in mind along these lines, but this is not for today ;)