I found myself briefly wondering if it were possible to have a decentralized open source repository of curated sites that anyone could fork, add to, or modify. Then I remembered dmoz, which wasn't really decentralized -- and realized that "awesome lists" on GitHub may be a critical step in the direction I had envisioned.
I think this could work for small, specific areas of interest. For example, there are only so many people writing about, and interested in reading about, programming language design. Those small communities could stand ready with their community-curated index when an "outsider" wants to research something they know well.
