The directories on Yahoo used to be edited by people, and as you can see from the image above (which I snagged from the Wayback Machine), it went deep.
The Yahoo Directory closed in 2014.
I’m inclined to write “imagine if we had something like this now?” But, anyone could build something like this for their local scene, for their state, their region.
And no one needs to make the BIG ONE, the supreme list of whatever. Everyone could have their lists of favorite bands, or art supply stores, or camera shops, whatever.
There are giant directories that exist like this today, I know. But they’re all flooded with SEO nonsense, scraped, void of humanity.
I think, if anything, we need to get back to human-curated directories and inspire everyone to make their own… de-centralized, as it were. This way there’s not one thing to rule them all, everyone just finds their favorites.