Good thoughts, Stoney.
I'd like it if the skinners could take off as much of the load of work from HTC as possible. I'm not sure every skinner posts pics of their skins here before submitting, though. I think I may have a couple that went straight to HTC, though its a habit of mine to get feedback from this group, especially helpful regarding accuracy - I think I've dumped more than one effort after it was shown the skin I was working on wasn't historically accurate.
Coupla problems though: often, the pics submitted are just promo shots and don't show enough detail in different areas of the skin to give a full evaluation. And even if the skin/skinner gets a thumbs down from the group, there's no practical way to stop them from submitting the skin.
Long ago I had the idea of using lucull's Aces High Skin Department site as the gateway for skin submissions. I thought this was a good idea because it 1) eliminated unreliable email as the method of transporting the skin files, 2) it would provide public knowledge of every skin submission, 3) it included screenshots of the skin so HTC could rule out poor quality or historically inaccurate skins just by looking at the screenshot, and 4) with the addition of several status flags, HTC could let everyone know the status of the skin submission - whether it was (A) Under Review (B) Accepted And In Rotation Queue, (C) Accepted AND Included in Next Skin Batch, (D) Declined - Quality, (E) Declined - Historical Accuracy, or (F) IN-GAME now.
HTC preferred to keep the system inhouse, but I still think using a website to control submissions rather than email is a good idea.