Every submitted head is validated by the Minecraft Heads team. The validation of Public Submissions decides if the head is published in the end or not.

This article will give you an insight about this validation process for Public Submissions.

If you would like to learn more about the Submission Process in general, check out this article.

Validation Process

First of all: We receive hundreds of heads a week every week. With this article, we would like to give you an idea on how we validate the heads. 

Please keep in mind that still a part of the validation is subjective to the person who is validating and due to the massive workload, we cannot discuss every single head.

Depending on the quality of the head, the head will be published or not. Heads which are not recognizable, buggy or otherwise low quality will not be published. 

If published, the head might also be added to the Minecraft Heads Collection (MCH Collection), which includes the best heads of the website.

Some heads which are very popular might also end up in the MCH Collection, even if the head is not of high quality standards. An example would be Steve heads: The default Steve only uses one layer so it should NOT go the the MCH Collection. But since we all love Steve, he can still be found in the MCH Collection.

Some heads can be blacklisted or pending for a long time. You can learn about every case in detail in this article.

Validation Process Results

• Published Heads: Minecraft Heads Collection (out best, published heads)
• Published Heads (all heads which are published)
• Private Heads (heads which are not published)
• Blacklisted (some heads will be blacklisted and won't be on the website anymore)
• Pending (some heads will be in validation for a very long time. Learn more about this)

Published Heads: Minecraft Heads Collection (MCH Collection)

The best submissions will go to the Minecraft Heads Collection (MCH Collection). This collection is the Minecraft Heads opinion on the best heads of the database. 

Here you can find a few examples of heads which were added to the MCH Collection or not and for which reasons.

Published Heads: MCH Collection	Published Heads
Those boys use both layers and many different color shades. Also the hair show a detailed structure for an overall better look.	Those boys only uses only one layer and less shading in general.
Those hay bales both have a big variety of colors, use both layers and are quite detailed in general.	The first hay bale uses similar colors to the Minecraft hay bale but does not show any details or structure or use both layers properly. The second head is still recognizable as a hay bale but also lacks details and the color palette does not fit hay that well.
A well made crafting table.	This head was created with the use of the original texture shrunk down to 8px width. If done this way, you have those typical unequal outlines.

Private Heads

If a Public Submission is not published and remains as a Private Head, this has usually quality reasons. 

Heads of very low quality or heads which are not recognizable for our validation team will not be published.

Also heads which looks like they are buggy somehow are not published, for example pixels which appear on the render image and looks random and unwanted.

Blacklisted

We reserve the right to blacklist heads and skinfiles associated with any of the following topics:

• Racism: We do not tolerate racist symbols, flags (such as the German Empire or Confederate flag), content related to Nazi Germany, blackface, racist caricatures or homophobic/transphobic content.
• Porn: We do not allow nudity on heads or skinfiles, no references to porn websites, no references to pedophilia like the Pedobear. References to games or mods with pornographic content are also not permitted.
• Controversial figures: Figures or flags associated with ongoing conflicts or controversies (e.g. wars, living dictators, etc.) are either blacklisted or sometimes not published.
• We reserve the right to blacklist other heads for reasons not listed here.

Long Time Pending

Some heads might be in status pending for a long time. Reasons for this might be: 

• Similar Skinfiles:
  The head you submitted is very similar to an existing head. Since our algorithm only finds identical heads and not very similar heads, we might keep your submission in Pending since we don't want to publish doublettes. A better algorithm to find very similar heads is planned.
  
  
• Controversial heads:
  Some heads might be very controversial and we might decide to keep them Pending for a later decision.