I personally disagree. Distrochooser is a great tool for distrohoppers who want to experiment and see what's out there. it is a little less useful than DistroWatch's ranking list, but that requires more reading to figure out if something would be diving into the deep end.

My recommendation is to either look at the top ranked beginners distro on distro watch, or to just recommend mint. Someone's first distro should above all else get out of the way. It should be as stable as possible, have as much hardware support as possible, and be as default as possible (less distro customizations of packages). Troubleshooting info must be captured in an easily indexible knowledge base (nothing is worse than searching for help with something and all you can find is a stack exchange post marked duplicate or a forum post with one reply that says "did you try googling?")