If a newbie is not good at speaking or writing in English language then the local board will be useful since the language that is used is your own language before you can join other discussions that are not in your local board (after learning English). If a newbie already knows English then there's a thread called Beginners & Help and there's also a thread that Ratimov have created where different topics are in there for newbies to check called Beginners & Help Encyclopedia.