I'm not certain DMOZ is the way to go. The big centralized directories are too hard to keep current. They get slammed with submission. And you end up with so many editors that no one has a sense of ownership.

I mean - maybe it's possible. Perhaps a really focused team could figure it out. (The 'awesome' directories have kind of figured that out, by having specialized directory.) But these personal directories are really sweet because they don't have to cover a topic. They can just be a collection of good stuff, who knows what.

Federation largely solves these problems. The biggest interop issue is sticking to a common/interoperable classification wrt. topic hierarchies, etc. and even then that's quite doable.

A solution would need crowdsourced collective vetting of sites along with a reputation system to keep out spam and bad actors without devolving into Wikipedia style personal fiefdoms.

I remember checking out DMOZ 15 years ago and it was already irrelevant.

DMOZ started stagnating around 2005. By the time it closed, it was already considered irrelevant, and much of the index had been unmaintained for years -- there was really nothing left to hold on to.