With MariaDB 5.3.3 Release Candidate out of the door, I could give some attention to documentation and improve the master What is MariaDB 5.3 page and pages linked from it.
I think the part about subquery optimizations should be fairly easy to read now, and our tech writer Daniel Bartholomew also did a pass over it. If you have a picture-type mind like I do, there is plenty of pictures, including the Subquery optimizations map.
For now, my goal was to just have a descriptions of all optimizations in place. We have also done substantial amount of benchmarking, but that data still waits to be processed and published.