Hi Gordon,
I sympathise with you not wanting to waste your time and know a lot of developers are irritated by the new system.
I have reread the long New Moodle Plugins Directory: maximum validation a... discussion with more attention and understand that approval is not necessary each time:
Martin Dougiamas- Friday, 16 December 2011, 04:23 AM
Just as a note to make sure everyone is on the same page: currently the human approval process is only required for the very first time a new plugin is added to the database. (Anthony Borrow has this job).
....
Unlike the old M&P database, subsequent versions of a plugin do not require human approval. This is to maximise conveneince to developers, so you can release new versions instantly now and make updates any time. But they are labelled as updates and we have full history on all changes in case problems come up.
Cheers,
Glenys