Set this to nil to inhibit Gnus from re-centering the summary buffer all the time. If it is vertical, do only vertical re-centering. If it is neither nil nor vertical, do both horizontal and vertical recentering.

Cut down on the headers included in the articles to the minimum. You can, in fact, make do without them altogether---most of the useful data is in the summary buffer, anyway. Set this variable to `^NEVVVVER' or `From:', or whatever you feel you need.

Set this hook to all the available hiding commands:

(setq gnus-article-display-hook
      '(gnus-article-hide-headers
        gnus-article-hide-signature
        gnus-article-hide-citation))

By setting this to nil, you can make all the windows smaller. While this doesn't really cut down much generally, it means that you have to see smaller portions of articles before deciding that you didn't want to read them anyway.

If this is non-nil, all threads in the summary buffer will be hidden initially.

If this is nil, Gnus will not put information in the buffer mode lines, which might save some time.