When reading the title I thought of "walled gardens," as in collaborative sites with heavy moderation/curation, but a lot of these seem to be just personal sites with careful attention to aesthetics, function, and content. And how can I trust any list like that which doesn't include gwern.net?
A walled garden usually refers to a nice to use software ecosystem (the garden) with the twist that it stops users from escaping / communicating with the outside (the wall). Apple products tend to be the example for that.
The title properly refers to the fact that these sites aren't hosted on substack / medium / some other pre build environment.
