I'd go even one step further - even if you are a good programmer, it's hard to discern between the good and the bad hires. The reason for that is that you can check for technical proficiency, but it's very hard to assess someone's long term motivation levels. There's plenty of candidates who are strong programmers, but are just not motivated and will go to great lenghts to do the bare minimum to not get fired. I think that's BTW why the large corps insist on things like high GPA - not neccessarily for the knowledge gained, but as a proof that you were able to consistently motivate yourself to a high degree over a period of a couple years, doing the work which you weren't neccessarily in love with - which is exactly what they need.
The other consideration is that I am not being completely altruistic here: I would gain something from getting to know keiferski "in person" (or "in video," anyway). A remote dev with some side projects is a valuable person to know, for all sorts of reasons. And of course there's the simple pleasure in getting to know, and hopefully helping, a human being.
You shouldn't hire me, because I'm not a professional, and you probably couldn't tell if I were, but I've recently had great personal victories in this area after many years of frustrating failure. I'd be happy to spend some time on Skype sharing what I've learned, particularly on how to approach what you call the "unstructured abyss."
Email is in my profile.