I changed the basics wiki category page to point users to some appropriate pages based on their intent a day or two ago, and that revision basically answers your question. More specifically:

Me and the other writer or two of Maemo basics intended it to be an introduction to maemo.org and Maemo targetted to mainstream (would be/current) Nxx0 users who happen to be interested in going behind the scenes. The default landing page of m.o is most definitely not appropriate for such people, so it was requested and hoped that maemo basics or some similar type of content could be offered as an alternative walk-through on the landing page of m.o. Nothing came of that (yet).

Maemo5 101 is more about how to (largely videos) use a maemo device, obviously the N900 in this case.

Is new users actually a different page than maemo basics? i think maemo basics started life as "new users" and was renamed to reflect its role as an introduction to maemo independent of whether the audience was actually a "user" or just prospective user.