can someone point me to a thread that tells you the average time you need to wait until your account is activated and your site is validated? i've done a search (as i only signed up about 1 hour ago) but cant find the info.
You do not need to wait at all. Just hit the validate hyperlink and you should be good to go. Probably worthwhile to get a Google API key though - as the coop might have a limit on how many times you can validate without your own key.
I thought you had to have your own API key in order to self validate. Even if you have your own API key, you can only run 1000 queries a day (which is plenty for most).
I think you may be right. Before the optional API key field, you could manually validate. So I guess people who do not have a key will just have to wait.