I agree with you on several parts,And there have actually been some decent attempts which i regularly use [1],[2]. I find it fascinating how people use Github to maintain curated lists. But I find list-making as an art in itself.It requires the curator to be able assimilate information in bite sized packets which are informative enough. As a rule,I feel that the size of each list item should inversely proportional to the size of the list. Collaborated and community curated lists are a god-send. Stack-Overflow also maintains really good lists/community articles.

But then think about the lists which are a single person's hardwork or maybe a group of people being paid to do so. A list need not necessarily be objective and can also provide the curator's views. This can be good or bad dependent on breadth of the curators knowledge. Lists(like really well written articles) are often the result of extensive data analysis which is why lists like those provided by WSJ and WGSN[3] are paid/exclusive services.

[1]:https://github.com/wasabeef/awesome-android-ui [2]:https://github.com/vsouza/awesome-ios [3]:http://www.wgsn.com/en/