WP Newbie – Advice on getting started

I’m looking to create a website that allows for shared knowledge and research about historical persons.

Relevant features include the need to allow users to register, add entries for new persons, allow for feedback and new research about existing entries, follow/monitor updates to persons in the database, like/unlike user posts, search the site for persons of interest, notifying users of “success stories” when important discoveries are made, etc. So it will be a community-oriented site requiring some database functionality on the backend?

Can anyone here recommend which theme(s) would be best-suited to such a site, and which plug-ins, etc., would be needed to achieve this functionality? Thanks.