When I came her I knew nothing either and had to figure it all out by myself and scarfing the wiki's and reading old posts for ideas.
If you can get a minilogin server running you can tweak it from there, I do all the time (item and money drop rates, various server variables and even making my own quests, and tradeskill recipes). But don't be afraid to ask for help.
But one thing with the Emu scene is that it is always changing sometimes things are awsome and then things turn to something that you might not like. I usually take it in stride and roll with it.
What type of server/rule set are you looking for though? EQEmu will always be kinda 50/50 a playing game and a tweakers/hobbyist pastime. I love to get into the database and mess with things, learn a little more Perl and SQL, and try to contribute something cool when I can, but I do love to kick back with a friend and farm CoM or Dulak for cool stuff too.
I do realize though EQ is a UBER-HUGE game and they will never get every zone, expansion, spell, quest, monster spawn, class AA, and instance to work 100% or even by the book. Although, this is something that every MMO-emu shares and they all are in a persistent state of ratcheting progress. I do think the progress this EMU has made over the last year has been amazing, and as long as people contribute to the hobby it will only get better.