I'm in much of the same n00b situation as the OP, having just in the last few weeks become aware of maemo and N900. While drooling over the prospects of buying a N900, I have bought an N810. I'm wondering about it all; how to use the devices, what goodies are on offer and how do I go about creating my wanted widgets and applications that I could possibly try to develop myself.

Using a lot of time, roaming around on the site and the many discussions, I'm gradually finding anwers. However, it would have helped me a lot, if there initially were some information available showing/explaining the overall structure of the maemo.org site.

I first looked under the top leftmost tab "Intro" which first met my eye - to no avail.

The "Intro" tab should (also) say something about the main components of the maemo.org site, and how they can and is supposed to be used:

E.g. There is actually a Wiki - and what's in it. Theres is also Brainstorm - how is it used, what's the functon, what should be put there - and what should one rather use Talk for. How does talk, brainstorm, bugzilla, garage and the new maemo.gitorious.org play together - and where are we expected to channel our questions, suggestions (and dear I also say complaints?) ?

There is Downloads, repositories, Garage, Gitorious and Nokia sites. Where should we search for interesting stuff - what status does it have, what to expect? (Take into account that there is quite likely that maemo could be new users first encounter with communities and open source development.)
Oh, yes, definitely. In addition to the transitory phase due to new device and version in the pipeline, it also seems that maemo.org itself is in transition, not only due to advent of ver 5 and N900, but also to ongoing(?) project of restructuring the site.

I believe that now to focus efforts towards enabling new users to better serve themself from all the good stuff that actually is already available at the site, will save efforts for those in the know, and reduce much frustration for those in the need - and the sooner we n00bs will (be able to) come here not to just to get, but also to contribute.

There are some good meta information around, but it should be gathered, expanded and served smack in the eye of new users. Those who are not new, will normally know their way around - it is new users who foremost need the help they can get from an inviting and informative site structure.

PS. To illustrate - although it perhaps says the most about myself - but it took me quite some time to find Brainstorm, which I saw many references to in discussions on Talk and which I performed a search for. Also a couple of weeks got by - too many interesting discussions in Talk to review first - before I got to the Wiki and the many helpful pointers it does provide to information I needed.