I contributed, and I know what I know by virtue of playing with the technology, keeping up with the news in r/ethereum, etc. The usual kind of thing one does in smaller tech communities.

Same here. For those who have been keeping up with Ethereum developments, the DAO has been in the works for a long time, and people already have a general idea of what it is. There's been a lot of previous discussion about it dating back years[1].

I think the problem with the website is the people who created it are so deep into this stuff that they think it does a sufficiently decent job of explaining it. They've forgotten just how much of a learning curve there is for someone outside of the Ethereum community, much less anyone unfamiliar with blockchain technology. They may have not even planned for the website to explain it to such people, thinking they would be uninterested or unable to figure out how to participate anyway.

[1] https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/05/06/daos-dacs-das-and-more-...