One of the problem I see with helpers is that a lot of them start to wrap the whole user's package handling experience (pacman wrapping) where it seems like it would be easy to ignore the prompts and "just download the package already". You can tell users the AUR is unsafe and to review PKGBUILDs but that doesn't mean they are going to listen or do it.

I did write a helper, mainly for myself and a few other arch users I know, and if not for having completed it enough to use it, I wouldn't do it again (I don't support pacman wrapping). I use like 5-10 packages from the AUR and I either maintain them or they _never_ change and I would know something is wrong.

The other point to this is how is this sort of compromise best communicated? It's important enough to hit [0] and obviously this news site, the mailinglist[1], but not the frontpage of arch itself.

[0] planet.archlinux.org [1] https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/aur-general/2018-July/...