I only recently realized this, it's probably common knowledge but it tripped me up while submitting a bunch of patterns. I have about 50 unpublished patterns that I release in small batches to not flood the voting page. I was confused as to why they were showing up on the fourth or fifth "pending patterns' page!
If you make a bunch of patterns, keep them on private, and then make them public later, they will be a few pages down on the voting page! If you want them to show up on the first page when you make them public, you have to duplicate the pattern and then make THAT one public, so that the date is correct. I think some people publish their patterns as soon as they create them, so if you're one of them, don't worry about this
Hope this made sense, I'm ESL and I feel like I worded it poorly