While investigating the Getting Started guide, I found that it could be further enhanced by introducing Inherited Resources plugin from José Valim.
This would also prepare the beginners to make code more clean and dry in a way that will be compatible with Rails 3, hopefully. And it would also bring more interest from beginners. I think the code currently generated for controllers by the default scaffold could scare first Rails users.
I also think there is a gap in this guide. I think that some users may be beginners in web development at all, while others are only beginners to Rails. In both cases, I think they would benefit from a overall view from Rails. People like me, for instance, don't like magic. I like to know exactly what is happening and how Rails makes things simpler. In that sense, an explanation about how web application work, how requests are handled in Rails, how concurrent request are handled and other topics would be very valuable to professional people willing to give Rails a try. I brief resume could be written to Getting Started, while referencing to a new more in-depth guide about deploying with Rails.
If you agree, I could try to submit a patch to Getting Started documentation.
Rodrigo.