In one of my groups we have a player who started playing on March 14th (22 days ago) who has finished the event and got over 1000 points last week, and is currently at about 250 points having only done 1 and a half rounds in this tournament so far, which isn't their boost. I expect them to be over 1000 points again, because it's cheap. they use mostly coin and tools, and are helping 25 FS members every day, plus neighbours. That's with less than a full month of activity and not even having bought the start diamond pack, so working on the level 2 builder.
If this person has the gold and supplies to cater 4 provinces to 5 stars (and also clear enough world provinces to unlock those tourney provinces), and has the gold/supplies to keep growing his city, I'm guessing he is playing alot. And knows what he's doing, or is getting really good advice from the rest of the FS.
And that's kind of my point. Its great if you get a recruit that is going to be online several hours a day, and can run beverage productions. And its really awesome for your FS to get this new player; they're going to be a real asset going forward. But that's not every new player - far from it. Just look at the swaths of cities abandoned in Chapter 1, 2, 3 etc. The player you referenced is in the top 0.1% of new players.
And the original complaint was about high level fellowships not taking a chance on new players. Unless you have prior knowledge about a player (friend, family, etc.), or perfect foresight, most of the newbie players you accept won't be contributing like your superstar.
My last FS had a bad habit of filling out its final 5 spots with players in the 1K-5K point range. And for the most part it was a disaster. We might get someone who was very active for a week, and then tailed off. And unless the Archmage is closely monitoring player growth (easier to do thanks to
@elvenstats) AND is ruthlessly cutting slow-growing players, taking a chance on a newbie is likely going to set your FS back.
Many people are fine with that setback. They want a low-key FS, and they care more about chat, and community, and lots of other stuff than the size of someone's city, or their ability to take trades. But lots of the higher-ranked fellowships don't want that setback, and they realize that there are plenty of people with 3-6 months of experience in the game that can fill that role.