I like the concept of community-driven recognition, but I would caution against separating assessment from learning (if you used "instruction" to mean the moment when learning happens). Communities that engage in collaborative work (like open
source projects, or guilds) are very good at surfacing and recognizing expertise. Making assessment a separate process increases the risk that we measure the things we can count, rather than the things that really count (butchering the Einstein quote).
I definitely see where you're coming from, but I think the danger there is not necessarily anything to do with the coupling of assessment and learning but the coupling of assessment with the learned, i.e those who possess a skill/piece of knowledge/trait should be the ones who define the assessments around it. I like that you bring up guilds because that's very much baked into their process I think.
