Only to honor the subject and initial motivation of this thread:
Recently we started drafting an actual Starter Kit, as Mathieu requested:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:New_contributors/Starter_kit
Edits and questions in the discussion page are welcome. In fact with a bit of focus from a few people during a few days we could get something pretty decent.
Mathieu and other newcomers: your contribution is especially valuable since you still remember how it was when you landed here for the first time.