Why do this instead of using Google to find out the most popular niche sites?
- because not all good sites can be discovered using Google. For example, there may be a Facebook group for a niche that is far more active than a dedicated forum site. There may be some good niche sites that are not ranked high enough. The idea is to let people submit good sites they know about.
- to make all such sites available at one place for quick access, not only for me but anyone else who is interested.
people have to remember that this list exists when they are thinking of ideas
- It is not just about discovering startup ideas. It is about interacting with people outside hacker community through these sites. You may know about problems they face and it can result in some good ideas but it will also be helpful in marketing some existing products for that niche.
- One thing I would like to make clear is that if enough links are provided I will make a website/google doc for this where anyone can submit new websites. May be I will do it anyway but there is no harm in asking for more such sites from community.
Who will take it upon themselves to categorize these and present them in a helpful way? Who will curate this list to ensure that only the "right" sites are added?
I will do that on a dedicated site/google doc. I don't think it is a very time intensive task. HackerNews isn't a good place to keep and maintain such information but people here can definitely help by submitting the sites they know about.
who will curate this list over time by adding, removing, and editing it?
If I make a small web app for this(it will take just few hours) anyone can submit sites and people who are interested in maintaining it can be made moderator. In any case some effort is definitely required and if people find it valuable it is worth the effort.
I guess you raised all these questions because you thought I am proposing that this list should be created and maintained on HN itself. That is simply not most effective way to do that. May be I didn't made it clear but the objective of this post was to just collect such links not make a wiki on HN.