I am people-based. and had no problem documenting and quantifying many of my contributions in UbuntuForums, Brainstorm, etc., for Ubuntu membership. All those platforms have tools to quantify involvement already (Discourse does also). Some platforms, like IRC and LoCo, lack such tools…but those contributions seem covered by the testimonials.
I’m not seeing a significant technical barrier to membership application. I do see barriers to entry and to contribution…they look to me the same people-problems (not technical-problems) that book clubs and railroad clubs have, too.