They’re a kind of modern version of web directories, and they failed for the same reason the original web directories did (spam/self-promotion, and outdated stuff).

▲

embedding-shape a day ago | parent [-]

The "actual awesome" lists were awesome, as every single software linked in those were good software.

But yeah, once "influencer developers" got a hold of the concept, misunderstood it to be an index rather than a curated list, it stopped loosing any value the concept had.

Now it's just random individuals who want to "own" a collection, but have zero care about the quality, and just merge whatever additions.

▲

matsemann a day ago | parent [-]

They were originally by an influencer developer (Sindre Sorhus), so they were junk from the start.

	▲	embedding-shape a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Sure, but that developer set out to curate a list, not do what seemingly everyone did afterwards, which was just to build the "longest list possible" with zero regards to quality of linked projects.
	▲	hypfer a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		FWIW, I appreciate their contributions to the ecosystem, in the sense that you can just take whatever they're doing, multiply by -1 in each dimension, and there you have your steering vector towards good ideas. That is genuinely useful and provides a lot of value.