Good recruiters vet people, and jobs, and match them up. And good recruiters have relationships and inside tracks with employers. Not all recruiters, of course. Experienced developers, on the other hand, have little incentive to vet their peers, and may do a worse job than a good recruiter because they will focus on different things. Developers and employers have different definitions of
quality, in other words.
Of course "managers only care about quality candidates coming through the door," or at least they care a lot about that. But you have to define what you mean by "quality candidates" and how you have an efficient way to identify those candidates and put them in front of potential employers. You can just say that people in your directory have experience and got vetted somehow, but I think you will have to do more than that to stand out and get credibility.
Many people have attacked this problem, including recruiters and agencies, and all kinds of job boards and lists of professionals seeking employment, from LinkedIn to more specialized or elite lists. If you have some new ideas, great.
You started this thread with a proposed directory for developers that would let the "opportunities can find them." Who pays in that model? How does an employer trust the directory? How is the directory maintained and vetted? How is it not LinkedIn, in other words?