Itamar Tzadok

In the block configuration you can set the number of notifications/conversations to display. See illustration blow.

To begin with go to ► Site administration / ► Appearance / ► AJAX and Javascript   and disable ajax to see if that resolves the disappearing blocks. If it does you have some js conflict there that needs to be  investigated.

It may also be useful to go to ► Site administration / ► Development / ► Purge all caches and purge all caches.

See this post for a possible pluggable solution.

Use the description question type. Not really a question, it allows you to add content to quiz pages between questions.

See File upload field in version 2.3+ flawed.