Seriously, what an amatuerish-looking mess. White text on black, no clear navigation path, I can't imagine any random end user actually using one of these sites.
How many people want to be the SysAdmin for all 2.0 services for their entire extended family? We need self-organizing systems, not federation.
It's possible to make installing this stuff easier.
As a designer there is only that much you can do if you don't get support, or get conflicting views from the client (= all the contributors in the project).
I'm not the creator, but perhaps you could offer 1 (or 2!) actionable critiques? For example, you mentioned the navigation path. Where did you get stuck?
You could say the same thing about MS-DOS, but if it gets the job done it will get used. The most important thing is functionality, not UI. After all, you can't polish a turd.
And maybe that's why nobody uses it anymore.
If you want to compare, compare to something current. MS DOS was not that amateurish looking for its age and its user base at the time.
(nobody as in "mostly outliers", for you pedants)