This is true, however I think this is less due to a lack of wanting to do it properly and moreso a side-effect of a lack of knowledge for recommended practices for applying new elements to tiddlywiki.
I know back when I was first getting into modifying the UI, I would just make a bunch of tiddlers with copy/pasted CSS from other stylesheets, tag it to match, and would just leave it that way, as well as in plain tiddlers with <style>
sections inside of them, or copy pasting tags with specific styles applies.
One of TW unavoidable shortcomings comes from how open it is to customization, in that making specific guides and guidelines can be a bit difficult, but as far as Stylesheets, themes, and Plugins go, I think it would benefit to actually differentiate their use-cases.
Personally, I see plugins as anything that modifies a specific section or function of TiddlyWiki, with a Theme being a specific type of plugin, aimed at only modifying the appearance of TW.
The only problem with this approach is how you cannot use multiple themes, such as one to modify buttons, and another to modify the story river, whereas plugins you can do this. I do not know if this is intentional or not.
If this isn’t the correct way to think about it, then that is also a good point to add as far as explaining their functions. It would seem documentation on the usage of Themes is a bit scarce on the main site.
If documentation were created by a user, where would they submit it to be evaluated and possibly added to the main website?