There seems to be some interest in customizing the message to users (registered or not) asking their first question ("modal pane"). These first-time questions represent a large proportion of questions asked. StackExchange suggests discussing this on meta before making a formal request. I suggest we follow our decision-making policy, specifically give everyone three weeks time (that would be until September 12th) to think about this, add proposals and give feedback/votes on the proposals.

For reference, here is the current, non-customized modal pane:

As an answer, I posted a proposal put together from ideas folks have expressed so far. Feel free to post other proposals as answers, as well. You can upvote proposals you like and downvote proposals you don't like. You can also vote on whether to go through with a change by voting on the question. Of course, you can also comment.

After there is sufficient feedback (the suggestion is to plan for at least three weeks of discussion), we can ask for the changes to be implemented (if there is community support).