To answer your questions...
1) Indexing has already started.
2) It is being contracted out.
3) User input won't be available until the indexes are available.
4) You have to remember that comments, "corrections", etc. are added to the index and not to the image.
5) What happens next is we wait for the index and there are, at present, no workarounds.
Andy Hatchett
www.fhiso.com