Since everything is in the planning stage for the central list, it might be good that I share what I've done so far(with subscripts for further comments).
By visiting sites that appear to be in the same endeavor as mine, I mentally sorted the list of moodle sites by category (1). From the first general sort I made, I then refined the search further by visiting their sites(2). For those that met my search criteria(3) I sent an email proposing that I list some or all of their courses on my site. If and when I here back from them in the affirmative, I need to place their link in my course offering list perhaps under a heading like "Other Courses By Other Moodle Sites" (4)
1) It would be nice if the central list be categorized and alphabetized
2) This selection probably would continue to be a human process.
3) Perhaps the Central List could include data that helps me pre-eliminate those other sites or courses that definitely don't want their courses offered outside their own sites, or lets me automatically publish on my site those that allow public course offering. A simple option selection when I register my site (i.e. yes, I want my courses to be publically available, no I do not want my courses to be publically available, or contact site for case by case determination) would allow this data to later be used and feature to scale as the number of courses grows.
To summarize, I think it would be nice if I could load the central list, sorted by category or alphabetically, and see check boxes next to all courses that allow listing on other sites. There could be some visual effect that differentiates the automatic acceptance from the review required courses. Those that I have selected now will be loaded on my course listing at my site automatically, in a separate course heading such as "Other Related Courses" or similar (have those links open in a new window). The automatic approval courses get listed immediately. The courses that require review only get posted when the course owners have sent in their approval.
Like I said, the manual retrieval method I used worked fine because there were just a few courses. I might like to work on this project though whenever someone gets it started. I've written scripts that do most of the above, but I'm new at this coding stuff and I tend to leave puddles and droppings
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1) my courses
2) selected courses that automatically allow listing on other sites
3) selected courses that require final authorization to post and have been activated by the cousre owner.