You bring up some important points. It is indeed a struggle to get started on Steemit due to the lack of information for new users. When I first joined I had to spend a lot of time reading through old posts & poking around to gradually learn some of the more nuanced aspects of the system. It's like walking into a dark room and having to feel out the contours of the surroundings while your eyes slowly adjust. I'm still learning and feeling my way along even now.

I know Steemit is still technically in "beta", but that excuse only goes so far. If you're going to make something available to the general public, and not just a select group of by-invite-only testers, then you really need to go the whole 9 yards with documentation, FAQs, and tutorials for new users.

Toward that end, a Steemit wiki (think community editable like Wikipedia here) might be the way to go, with a prominent link to it on the sign-up page & main menu. Granted, people are more incentivized to write Steemit posts due to the monetary rewards, but those quickly become lost in the constant deluge of new posts and are thus not really conducive to a new user FAQ type of format. At the very least, a well maintained wiki could link back to those Steemit posts that the community considers essential must-reads for newbies. And there's no shelf life on wiki edits; links can always be changed to reflect the most up-to-date, relevant information. If such a community effort were started, I would be happy to help out by adding some resources that I've already found helpful.