The point of hypertext and links of the web is so that information can be presented like this. You can go from breadth to depth in just a couple of links as you need or will. You can go up and down a tree, or hope branches. If something isn't clear, it's easy to go look it up using the links. The problem is that sometimes this information doesn't come together in the big picture, as you say. I know I've ran into that learning how to work with programming APIs. Some are very large and it can be difficult to get the big picture. Learning these things also causes me to forget how hard it can be for others that don't work with large knowledge sets to grasp even smaller ones, such as a game wiki.
I'll agree there needs to be a good start page. Sevenless's guide does a really good job of that, but he didn't want it posted on the wiki. It'd probably be good to have a discussion about it. It could be done here, and I wouldn't complain (I'm not a moderator, though), but the wiki has discussion pages it could all be had on, too. It probably should at least have its own thread, though. edit: note there is a 'start here' page already, so whatever needs to be discussed, can be.