I notice that you guys for all your grand technical know how, suck at documentation.
The problem is that since our ability to get paid depends on BTS price which has been dropping like a rock, we feel under immense pressure to spend all our efforts on things that will improve the user experience, and cut anything else -- including documentation.
Would I be able to do this in the code and the wiki?
My personal preference for documentation is version controlled Markdown files. I would suggest you document stuff in the much neglected
https://github.com/BitShares/bitshares/tree/develop/docs and submit pull requests (please make pull requests against develop, not master).
I am working on a Python script which will enable easy writing of tests (one of the main problems I've been working on since I joined the project is that our current testing frameworks are deficient and our test coverage is spotty). It should be ready for release sometime in the next week or so. I'll be writing guides over the weekend about how to get involved in testing.
Unfortunately I know exactly what you mean about having difficulty as a newcomer, I had some of the same problems when I was a community member.