Hi.

I just finished reading your message and before I say anything, there are two things you need to clarify:
Is it an article or a stand-alone list? It can be both, but then it must satisfy the inclusion criteria for both; if I say "it is overwhelming", that'd be a huge understatement. Personally, I think it is a list. I never made the mistake of thinking the only list is a bulleted or numbered list. Tables are, most of the times, lists; comparison tables are always lists.
Do you want to abide by the policies or do you want to ignore them? Make no mistake, I have heard the sentence "writing a decent article" so much that I have no faith in it; if one hundredth of them were true, Wikipedia would have now been full of featured articles. So, I won't hold any value in it unless I see signs of it being true.

That said, yes, arguments like "but this page is not a list of everything in the universe" in response to "Wikipedia is not a directory of everything in the universe that exists" are so childish that I don't even give them the pleasure of handwaving them. And the fact that WP:NOT was once an essay doesn't make me think any less of it, let alone violate it; it is now a fundamental policy, so its original writer has my highest respects for writing such a popular thing. It says we are not a directory and that means a hybrid of directory is not allowed either.

Best regards,