There probably isn't sufficient documentation for some of those things. The Note Depth setting allows you to set how many levels of notes you want to be displayed. If you had a note depth of 3 and a note text threshold of 2 you would see something like below only the last line wouldn't show up as noted:

Re:Stuff
   Blah
   Re:Re:Stuff
       Blah
       Re:Re:Re:Stuff
          Re:Re:Re:Re:Stuff(wouldn't show up with a note depth of 4)

The Note Text Threshold if lower than Note Depth allows you to see the link to the note but not the text. In the example above Note text threshold is 2 so you can see the link Re:Re:Re: Stuff but not the actual text of the response. As for show unmoderated. Content in Cool Uses For Perl,Perl Poetry,Craft,Seekers of Perl Wisdom,Craft,Meditations, etc need to be approved by an editor.. ie me to display in any of those sections or on the frontpage. If you want to see all the stuff added in any of those particular sections you can do so by choosing that option in user settings. This won't work for the stuff on the front page.

You might also want to check out Voting/Experience System. Right now you can't see the rating of a given node unless you own it or have voted on it.

vroom | Tim Vroom | vroom@cs.hope.edu