the latest iteration of this idea seems to be the "awesome" lists on github [https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome], which are a bit more decentralised and crowd-sourced while still being human-curated.
Exactly - the first time I looked at https://github.com/bayandin/awesome-awesomeness my immediate thought was that we're recreating Yahoo, or maybe publishing a webpage with all of your bookmarks is making a comeback.