So does that mean that it is probably not in the ability for an average person to make a small multiplayer server?

Actually, no it is not out of the ability of an average person because it would be difficult. The issues are the following:
– The source has never been cleaned up to support a «fresh install»
– It’s a development snapshot, so some features are halfway done or broken
– It certainly has buffer overflow errors and other problems, making you vulnerable
– When stuff inevitably breaks, you’ll better have experience or you can’t fix it
– Noobs will spam everything when they can’t play

This is why I don’t recommend for anybody to set up a server. And the no-support, no-tutorial rule is to prevent people ignoring this.