If there is one major downside to the custom development community, it's that the sheer volume of minor variations in custom ROMs and largely-borrowed development makes it difficult, if not impossible to find real, quality development. XDA aims to change this by creating Original Development forums. These special forums will be reserved for projects that adhere to a set of rules, not the least of which is being largely original work.

Other criteria for the Original Development forums, from XDA:

The separation aims to remove much of the clutter that comes from "developers" taking already custom ROMs, tweaking a couple of things or adding a custom icon pack and repackaging it. Serious development will now have its own tier, free of a lot of clutter. As David has pointed out in the past, this clutter can make it very difficult to find good ROMs.

For more info on what is and is not allowed in the new forums, head over to XDA's post on the subject. Hopefully this will make the community more accessible to newcomers who want to explore what their phones can do without extra confusion.

Source: XDA