Indeed!
Im beginning to think more and more that once a community gets as diverse as XDA has (noobs, non-dev enthusiasts, etc.), releasing via forum is going to be increasingly problematic. People just aren't going to reliably read through oodles of back posts no matter how much you ban, beg, and plead - and devs are too busy (legitimately) and their time too precious to document every little detail of what works and what doesn't on the initial post. What this leaves you is an increasing noise to signal ratio in threads that just frustrates everyone, bums out devs, and causes flame outbreaks.
I imagine (hope?) that someone at XDA will eventually come up with a platform where devs can more elegantly distribute releases and leave forums to their best utility - helpful community discussion, feedback, and support.