I use a similar workflow and documented it: http://freeseer.github.io/contribute/basics.html#basic-workf...

One difference is that instead of fetching and rebasing changes from origin straight into your topic branch, we recommend checking out master, pulling in changes, checking out your topic branch and rebasing against master. This way master is also up to date.

As for the .gitconfig tip near the end, I don't think changing the behaviour of such a common command like pull is a good idea. Better to be explicit.