[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jjhiza:
I find this thread incredibly compelling for a number of reasons. First, it's addressing a serious epidemic here on XDA, and secondly, it's simply a great discussion... Nobody is arguing, there's no trolling, and opinions are being shared without fear of being flamed... THIS is what this site needs.

As for the topic, I completely agree with 90% of the posts here. No, I don't feel that toolkits should be banned, and in fact, I think the devs that make them are doing a service to the community. However, the Xda moderation team needs to find a way to reclassify and restrict access to toolkits. They need to be placed in their own section, and locked down for anyone who doesn't have at least 150 posts in a development section. That would piggyback off of the dev section post limit that is in place already, forcing users to spend real time in the community, before they gain access to advanced (and potentially harmful) tools and mods. My belief is that toolkits should only be used by experienced users, in order to save time, or fix an issue in a pinch. The reason? Because we know how to fix things when something goes wrong.

The problem here isn't the toolkits, nor the guys who make them; the problem is the desire for instant gratification, and Xda's growing propensity to pander to new, inexperienced users. As others have already stated, new users, in a rush to join the "cool" root crowd, are turning to automated processes, and learning absolutely nothing about their devices. ADB and fastboot aren't rocket science, but they sound daunting, which is why new users often take the "easy" way out.

I remember my first root experience quite well, and it may serve as a good lesson to newer users... My first Android device was the OG Droid. As soon as I got it home, I was looking for cool ways to make it my own, and I kept seeing the term "root" being thrown around. I trolled the forums (Xda and DroidForums mainly) until I was familiar with some of the terms that period were using, and then I started asking for advice - what were the benefits of rooting, what were the potential pitfalls, and what was the degree of difficulty... I got some great answers, and kept reading and learning though, because honestly, I was afraid (paranoid even) that I would mess something up. Then one night, I realized that I felt confident enough to attempt to root, so I did... It went well and I haven't looked back since. That journey from stock to rooted took me about 4 months - mainly because of the fear of failure, but also because I wanted to know what I was getting into. I see very few new users doing that these days.

While there's a lot to be said about the laziness and hand holding on this site, I have to place a small portion of blame at our (the experienced users) collective feet... We often feed newbies the information they ask for, instead of giving them the tough love they need to grow and learn.

Most of the names I see in here are not guilty of hand holding at all, but my point is that we need to set certain "barriers to entry" for the root community. We're dealing with devices that cost upwards of $1,000 (at times), full retail, and the one thing we can do is save new users from themselves, by making it a little more difficult for them to gain access to advanced tools, mods, and concepts. They should be forced to seek information, prior to ever "setting foot" in a development section. I know this view might be unpopular, but creating a bottleneck on access is the only thing I can think of to truly stop this avalanche of laziness and misinformation, and the problems associated with them.

/rant