Ha! I just found my own first post in this forum, and I was pretty much where the original poster in this thread is today.
Timbo, if you're out there, I found KM worth the investment in time it took to learn it. After a year or more of using KM, it's just natural, and the learning curve is nowhere near as steep as it appears to be.
Better getting-started documentation would probably be a good thing, but I'm not the right person to ask. I don't need documentation at this point, so I don't really know the current state of KM literature.
Be well, hope KM proves as useful to you as it has to me.