I hadn't had the chance to carefully read through this section yet, but now that I have, I couldn't help but notice a fairly widespread issue regarding application indexing. The standard procedure where moderators submit the issue to the admins doesn't seem to yield particularly positive results. Perhaps all of this is also caused by suboptimal communication and partial, likely insufficient information about internal procedures and the potential pitfalls one might (even accidentally) run into.
I fully understand that submissions are overwhelming (and AI slop certainly hasn't helped in that regard: I don't mean AI-assisted projects, but full shovelware generated entirely by it) and manpower is likely limited. However, I believe a solution needs to be found, as this negatively impacts how serious developers perceive the platform.
In fact, given that my ticket has been unresolved for days (like many others) and I don't intend to start my own thread right now (as I suspect it would be useless to the cause, as seen here), I was starting to consider whether to delete my account and publish on Steam instead, even paying the $100 fee despite it being a free project. It would be a shame, since I had chosen Itch.io partly out of "ethical" reasons, wanting to support a certain vision of an online store. Still, I think a minimum level of consideration (speaking generally, not just about my case since I've "only" been waiting for a week) should be expected; at least, that's my view.