[stiff]

I disagree, it's trivial these days to get a list of anything (books, movies, software etc.) simply from google, so if you are going to manually compose a list it better be A) really strictly selected based on true personal experience B) contain any kind of explanation why the item made the list. It's not supposed to turn into an encylopedia, but e.g. I find annotated bibliographies with 2-3 sentences of comments by someone knowledgeable in the field much more valuable than just a list of books.

[TeMPOraL]

The lists are curated. Maybe superficially, but that gets 80% of the job done and is extremely good at filtering out crap. I'd say the level of effort is just right for making the lists broadly useful, as a tool to get the general lay of the space. If they were more strict, they'd lose tools that may be useful for visitors with slightly different preferences than the curators.

[mud_dauber]

Thank you. This was exactly my thought as I read the earlier critiques.