How Approval Works

Most submitted Minis/Models will go through three phases of approval on The Mini Index. This page outlines what steps are required to move on to the next phase of approval and how long to expect it to take. It's important to note that models can be tagged at any point in the process, before they show up in searches and after they're fully approved even.

Unindexed

When initially submitted, every model will be "Unindexed". Unindexed models do not show up in searches and only show up if you view the creator's creator page. Once a moderator has reviewed it and determined that it's acceptable for The Mini Index they'll mark it as "Pending". The criteria here is pretty lax in that the model just needs to be remotely related to the goal of the website.

Unindexed models are reviewed often (multiple times a day most days) and will be marked as "Pending" with minimal review. If someone tags an unindexed model, we may skip pending and go straight to approved.

Pending

Once a model is marked as "Pending" two things happen differently for it:

1. It'll show up when users search by name - If a model named "Brass Dragon Updated" is pending, it'll show up on a search for "Brass Dragon", albeit after all the "Approved" minis that match the search.
2. It'll show up for moderator review after it has some tags from users - Moderators will look at the tags people have added, tweak the tags as needed, and approve the model. This happens pretty much daily, but we make an effort to not flood the site with too many new approvals each day.

Why hasn't my tagged model been approved yet?

There's a few reasons:

1. We "trickle out" approvals - We found that it was very annoying for users who visit often to have many pages of new minis to look through on their visits and they'd miss content. On an average day we'll approve at most around ~4-10 models depending on the queue and quality of tags. We will have periods where we're pushing for more tagged models and approve as many as possible.
2. A creator has a lot tagged pending models - We also found that it's worse for both creators and users to "flood" the home page and browse page with a single creator. When we only approve models from a single creator in a day, they get maybe a day or two of high visibility, then zero visibility for a while. If you're a creator who just found out about The Mini Index and tagged 50 models, that's amazing, thank you, you'll see them trickle out over the course of a few weeks with 1-2 showing up per day. They'll all be searchable and visible on your creator page.
3. We have to clean up the tags - More tags doesn't mean better. If we see a Pending model with 30 tags, half of which are irrelevant to the actual model, that means we need to delete a bunch of tags and clean it up. Please follow the guidelines to tagging Models.

Approved

Once a model is approved it'll show up on the home page, browse page, be visible when users search for its tags, and receive priority in listing when users search for its name. Tags can still be modified on approved models.