I think we would need some kind of final project for "certification". Something that would change at least twice a year and that you would have to finish in some specified time frame and be kept from the public until the new one is in effect. This would prove that a person could do a piece of work in a given chunk of time. The only problem with this is that it would require people to vet the work, graders. To do a good job it would require a lot of work on the graders part. Another thing would be cool: final projects, as submited, would be published for download. Here is the work I do. I got this from the sans giac security certs, it is a useful thing for the community but it is also a time sink for the administrators/graders.
