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Well, it's known for decades that the culture on LKML isn't exactly newbie-friendly.

I believe that keeping newbies (which most often have no idea about how much security is required in kernel code) off is actually valuable in the kernel - just imagine what sloppy coding can cause on millions of devices, or actually, see it happening right now on routers and Samsung smartphones.

There's a reason why lots of Android driver stuff is not in mainline Linux, and the biggest reason is that most of the code shipped by the manufacturers is utter crap which Linus would tear apart in seconds, not to mention security experts or actual blackhats using said crap code to own devices.

No one is arguing for accepting lower quality code.

Pushing out "not up to snuff" code on the kernel layer to potentially millions of people is unacceptable.

But isn't that also the point? A combative culture would intimidate people who aren't up to snuff yet. The people contributing are more likely to be those who are confident enough in their abilities to know they don't deserve any of the community's scorn.