piatkow - 9:04 am on Aug 5, 2010 (gmt 0)

So I don't know if the time spent on maintaining a quality directory would be more or less than that spending on writing articles.

Articles are essntially "write and forget". Every link in a directory needs to be rechecked regularly. I would say a max of every two years. Which is more attractive to the visitors depends on your subject area.

Link checking isn't just a matter of looking for 404s. To guarantee quality you need to ensure that each destination site still refers to the original topic, is maintained and is up to date