It certainly shouldn’t take a year to know how the forum works. What a fiasco that would be from a Forum’s perspective … You also don’t have to get acquainted with it all. There are parts I never wade, simply because I’m interested in what’s been dealt with there, or because it would open a new time consuming can of worms which I don’t really want to currently face.

Simply browsing Beginners & Help for a bit should suffice to begin with, but it all depends on your specific areas of interest. If your interest lie just in Campaigns, then things are a different matter, since often interest lies not on what’s said on the forum, but rather much on how to monetarize it disregarding what’s said …