Nick,
Think your being bit harsh, I'm no developer but I know that the correct command for restarting and stopping, also most of those how to's are from people like me and you (who will yeah get things wrong we only human), your'll probably find alot of info is out of date or incorrect on those links you put up, it just seems no-one takes time to correct any of these as these are editable wiki.
I'm sure if your on the dev mailing list you would have seen Gordon post about the Dev guide a few months ago now.
Unfortunately the vast majority of that info never filters its way out to the community (Without us spending hours of digging for information).
I would disagree, having been watching quietly over the last 4/5years on the dev list you tend to build your knowledge base up even if you subsribe to the bug tracker you learn so much, I don't think it's actually a matter of us not seeing it I think it's a matter of not enough people out there to help out with documenting all of the work, just take a look on the FAQ on 7.0 there's quite a few in the bug list but not many people seem to be working on it.
Anyway I think we are detracting from the original thread here...