The next major thing to accomplish would be to come up with a definite "recommended reading order" of policies (as hinted at on WP:POL) and shove step #1 down newbie's throats. This should probably be a condensed version of [[Wikipedia:Avoiding common mistakes]]. Then we can start to educate them on the very very basic policies of V, OR, NPOV, copyvio etc.
I think the first policy new editors need to be educated in is "allow your contributions to be edited mercilessly". I've always seen that as the flip side of IAR: if you're a new user or otherwise not inclined to pay much attention to learning the rules, *ignore them*, but let the rest of us massage your edits into a usable form. This is how my interpretation of IAR differs from most: I actually think that we're *supposed* to ignore NPOV much, if not most of the time. Contributing information and making sure that information is written from a NPOV are two separate tasks. Give us information in whatever form you're best able to and let other editors make sure it conforms to NPOV. (Writing polemics doesn't help us much, and neither does writing polemics but prefacing each point with "some say". On the other hand, if you write "the Spanish-American war was primarily caused by U.S. expansionism" and are able to give a source, we don't need to beat you over the head with a stick because we can rephrase it ourselves.)