In contrast, JSON is super intuitive and basically self documenting.
Personally I've found the exact opposite when dealing with 'normal' people. Most people can get basic YAML, but unless they're a programmers (or at least know how to program) most people fail miserably at writing JSON by hand.
I agree with this. Our biz guys have to edit JSON config files regularly, and they're limited to basically just copying/pasting lines from existing files and editing the values. When they need to be able to do more, we end up building a UI for it and either storing the config elsewhere or writing the code to manage persisting their changes to the config.
Personally I've found the exact opposite when dealing with 'normal' people. Most people can get basic YAML, but unless they're a programmers (or at least know how to program) most people fail miserably at writing JSON by hand.