From my understanding glicko needs a central starting point. lichess.org does it exactly the same way (they also start at 1500 elo) and I don’t for a second imagine that that is a conincidence.
You can’t simultaneously say glicko is great but i wanna pick what rank i start at because that stops being glicko.
If a new player plays 2-3 ranked games they can fall all the way to 25 kyu (let alone the 16 kyu required to play ranked games with 25 kyus) so I’m guessing the issue is more that new players are not playing ranked games for whatever reason…
Furthermore, new accounts DO NOT start at “rank 13 kyu”, they start at “rank ?” they may well have the equivalent elo score of a 13 kyu but that is not the same thing. The system is designed so that losing to an unranked player does not affect your ranking, meaning if people can refrain from being a dick and just let new players play a couple of games they will all get sorted to their appropriate area of the very large rating pool.
I have about 50% game cancellation and that has remained about the same both before and after glicko was implemented so don’t try and tell me cancellation has gone up because it was always a problem.
Back when you could pick your own rank, mods and admin were constantly flooded with requests to change their rank. Now we have a new system specifically designed to find an accurate rank in very little time so that the mods don’t have to worry about all of that.
If anyone plays 3 games and quits because they lost them all, they were going to quit anyway…
Also, from my own personal experience… players at roughly 13k are more likely to give new players a gentle game than ones at 25k…
almost every 25k game I see ends by resignation after a massive group dies. At least if an experienced player finds they are paired with a “rank ?” player they could possibly have the decency to ask if they’re a brand new beginner and perhaps offer them a teaching game (which can still be easily won without humiliation)
So, the way I see it… the only people that will leave this server because of these supposed “problems” are the people who were never going to play anyway, and the dicks that can’t spare 15 minutes of their day to help out a new player… sounds alright to me 
don’t let the door hit you on the way out if that’s the case 