There is a need for a basic register of proposals that have been submitted to the Emoji Subcommittee. Currently, emoji proposals are posted to the UTC register after they have been reviewed by the ESC as being actionable by the UTC. For proposals that make the cut, some time can pass between the date of submission and the date they are posted. For proposals that are deemed unsuitable, there is simply no public record.
Consequently, there is no way to know if a particular emoji has been proposed, either while a submitted proposal is being reviewed or if a proposal has been rejected. The "Submitting Emoji Proposals" page at http://unicode.org/emoji/selection.html quixotically notifies the reader using bold face to "check the Emoji List to make sure your proposal is new": this list contains emoji that have already been encoded. This is a problem. There have been three instances where I have worked on emoji proposals only to later learn that they were already proposed earlier. And I learned that only because I check the UTC register frequently for my script encoding efforts. If there were a basic register of emoji submissions, I could have easily checked it and saved the hours I spent in drawing up documents. The de facto rationale for not posting emoji proposals to the UTC register right away is that 'there are too many proposals that are unactionable or of insufficient quality'. But, I think this rationale does not hold water too well. A basic task of a standards subcommittee is to maintain a list of artifacts that pertain to its function. For the ESC, these artifacts include all emoji submissions. And a list of these artifacts can easily be made available at http://unicode.org/emoji. So, that instead of pointing prospective emoji proposal authors to a list of already encoded emoji, they can be pointed to a list of emoji submissions. This basic register can be as simple as a list of names. If the ESC wishes to not post other details, that is fine. I am not asking for a Roadmap. I see from the announcement made yesterday that the ESC now has (at least) four members. Congratulations to the new members, who I believe to be highly capable of maintaining a simple public list of emoji submissions in short time. All my best, Anshu