I don’t want to diss writing better documents. I believe they are needed. But when talking about large groups of people, a principle to keep in mind is “people don’t read”. That is to say, the more obvious you can make your software without people having to read, the more likely you are to help larger numbers of people use it more effectively than by writing better documentation alone.
When I find features of my Discord bot code that my users are having a hard time using properly, or aren’t even aware exist, I almost never think “this is because my documentation is poor”. Some of those issues are expensive to fix and, as much as I’d love to fix those flaws, they go on a list to deal with “later” while I work on more pressing issues. That’s where having a good community around the software really helps. If someone struggles with using the bot, they can almost always find someone else who is slightly better with it than they are to help them out …
But that’s on a fundamentally social platform, Discord. This platform is all about community. The unique situation iNaturalist finds itself in is that while it is a social platform with a great community around it, not everyone is there for social reasons! Honestly, I feel a lot of those would be better off with Seek. But what can we do? Yes, we’ll get some 1-star reviews from people who don’t “get” us, but I doubt if poor documentation is the cause of that.