I'm ready to compete with anybody, as long as folks know how good I am - so I don't end up competing with a newbie at .1 the price that they will never deliver on.

Yeah, that is a huge problem with elance, etc.

Two things I've been thinking about

1) Invite only referral system - You only get in if someone vouches for you -- keeps quality up, probably keeps your cost up as well, if you want bottom of the barrel you go to one of the other places.

2) If it ends up being completely open, then people can sort by third-party signals (github followers, stackoverflow karma, quora karma, linkedin connections, etc.)

Thanks for taking the survey!

Seems like a price floor would solve that problem assuming that's what the people paying for the contractors really want solved.

I think I would spin it and make it North America only (or is there something that already does that?). That would be a great selling point for a lot people.

I promise I'll charge just as much as American developers. No, really ;)

The one feature I like about vWorker is that, when posting a job, I can limit the potential contractors to "mature economies," defined as the US, Western Europe and Australia.