well, I read (whitepaper,) and read (bluepaper,) and read (PRs and branches on the GIT,) and read (the developer's portal,) and when I began to worry that I'd run out of material, I started reading (posts by the server minded like GTG and Someguy123,) and then also read (started lurking anywhere established devs were talking about witnessing and infrastructure.) And then I went out and started asking questions as I worked through it myself. So, realistically, it seems our approaches are much the same.
The big thing to remember is that despite the hardforks often being heavily coded by the Steemit team (given their proximity and experience with the chain, they drive a lot of the development,) Steemit!= STEEM. As much as they want the chain to be better and better, they also do indeed want customer retention and as a company that is building a social media interface, it's more important that people use and understand that than taking the time to educate every person on the inner chain workings. (Most really don't give much more than a cursory shit anyways.) This means past the FAQ and documentation above, they don't always spend too much time handholding through this technical stuff.
The forks are voted on by elected witnesses chosen via the consensus mechanism inherent to our DPoS system. Even though this may not be a truly community provided hardfork when measured on a contribution basis, we're getting closer to that every day as more interested devs have begun experimenting. Your best bet is to begin by heading over to STEEM.chat and making some forays into discord communities; these are forums that touch on pretty much everything and anything related to STEEM and Steemit.