I’ve been wanting something like this for a while. There are plenty of holes in the idea, but it’s a good start.
As you’re researching a topic you use something like delicious to save and tag it. Delicious is great. It’s weakness is the lack of a search engine on the links. When you seach, it is on the tags and descriptions you and other people have provided. I don’t like spending 20 minutes filling in all the tags or writing a detailed description. I shouldn’t have to. There should be a search engine on my links. The computer should take my links as a search tree and search through that limited set with a Google algorithm or whatever. Even keyword searches would be better than nothing. Kind of like searching your browser history, but more specific, because you flagged the website pages.
Now, take this idea and merge it with something like wikipedia which lets anyone edit a page. Then that page which links out to everywhere, edited and generated by people, the seed of a search, updated continuously as time goes by, would be the leading internet expert in the topic. At least a first place to visit.
The tags could provide the context that Google lacks and Ask tries for. The link outs keep the information relavant and fresh, part of About.com’s problem. No text is on the web page; there may not even be a web page.
Ideally, Google, Yahoo, MSN would use the site to improve their results. For every link someone clicks on that came from the user generated list of links, the site gets $.01 or whatever. Kind of the opposite of paid advertisements.
Another option is to target the site at researchers and enthusiasts. Provide a logon for a fee that is reduced as the user adds and edits the list of links. Perhaps the shareware idea of a free logon for 30 days.