We're sure to find out, as wikis and wiki-variants appear everywhere.

When frustrated with DMOZ, I've often wished for a more radically open web directory, with submissions and categorizations from anyone, at any time, like a wiki. Community moderation would curb the worst abuses.

Those wishes have been answered: the latest from the folks behind Wikipedia is Wikia, which applies the wiki philosophy to a search index of web sites.

It's very nascent. It appears to be more of a site directory -- like the early Yahoo and then DMOZ -- for now. But as it grows, it could take on more comprehensive search-and-ranking functions.

Why not let any contributor instantly add sites -- even individual pages within sites -- and reorder the results of any search based on users' perception of sites' appropriateness to the query? Well, spammers and system-abusers and ranking-wars, I guess. But could open feedback systems be devised that keep those problems suitably in check? It's worth a try!

After entering a couple sites into Wikia, I think it could take some ease-of-keyword-tagging lessons from del.icio.us.

Also notable: Wikia is not a project of the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation, but the software and database are available under open source/open content licenses, and "[a] percentage of profits of Wikia are intended to be donated to the Wikimedia Foundation."