We need a way to better recognise a wider scope of contributions to Drupal for 'social' reasons (so people who don't actually know each other can more easily determine who is who and how they contribute to the project) so that people who don't actually 'commit' anything but contribute a lot have their contributions more recognisable, and then so that we can potentially match people to projects/issues when we need people to help!
develop a taxonomy that lists our areas of expertise which could be visual design, theming, user experience, tech writing/documentation, coding, testing, reviewing, event planner, drupal evangelist, association board member, public presenter, emcee
map that taxonomy to 'phases' of a project (ref: the wire-frame that I did for the issue template and the different tabs/phases that a project goes through http://bit.ly/hzLsZh ).
terms from the taxonomy can then be associated with your profile on Drupal in one of 2 or three ways. Firstly - you can say that you have expertise in one or more areas of practice. So, I might say that I have expertise in UX for example. Secondly, someone else can look at your project an say that you have expertise in a particular area of practice. So, I might look at your profile and say that you're good at documentation. If I do that, then it will say on your profile that I think you're good at documentation, so this is more than a 'quantifying' tool - it's not necessarily about how many people think you're ace at documentation, it's more about who think's your good at documentation. This will have relevance either if I already know someone who is vouching for you and I trust their judgement OR if I know people who recognize good documentation when they see it and I see they are vouching for you. (These are obviously not mutually exclusive). This means that we will hopefully be more thoughtful about who we vouch for because we're kind of putting our own reputation on the line by doing this. (You don't want to be seen to be vouching for someone who is incompetent or a douchebag, right?) I'm drawing a little on Quora again thinking about how they show who has +1ed answers on Quora not just how many people have +1ed.
terms/areas of practice can then be given more or less prominence by people in the community +1-ing you for that area of expertise. So, for example, I'd go +1 the people who I know who already contribute a lot to UX in Drupal on their profiles, assuming they'd already 'tagged' themselves (eh, I know, I'm mixing tags and taxonomy... this is why it's not good practice to describe implementation as you're describing your design idea!). (See above re: trying to make it not about numbers but more about who is vouching for you).
One thing we have stats on but don't really acknowledge is the posts someone makes on a give project in the issue queue. That is a good indicator of involvement. +1 point for starting a new support request, +3 points for filing a new bug, +5 if it gets fixed (as opposed to duplicate or outdated). +5 for reviewing code, +5 for answering someone's support request, etc... Again, can be gamed.. Still commits are like this too. Some people make lots of small commits to inconsequential projects. Others make a few big ones to well know ones. Tough problem to solve... every time I think about it I get disgusted with the need to quantify people. Wishing we had more evolved ways of communicating value and building community.
We need to design in prompts for people to show recognition with out having to remember to go elsewhere. I'll add that to the original post. I also think that the taxonomy of expertise has to include all the kinds of behavior we want to reward/show we value.
Coming from what I have experience of, I think a system like LinkedIn's recommendations has some merit, whether this is an extension of or in addition to the vouching system that Leisa has mentioned. If someone had a link alongside their name listing the number of recommendations/vouches they've had and the ability to drill down and find out what these were for, I think this would add much more value.
How about translating these ideas to a Slashdot-like 'karma' system using the 'tags' Leisa described? This way the recommendations are linked to the actual activity in the issue queue (like Jacob suggested), but you also have the 'people thing'. You could have things like:
+1 helpful (answering support request)
-1 unintelligible question (support request)
-1 duplicate (that'll teach you not to search first ;))