I think if you're proposing something as a "good alternative", then being able to understand why it got near-zero adoption, and failed in the real world, is probably important.

I would say that Namecoin appears to solve a problem that nobody actually has in practice.

I know advocates are pushing Ethereum Name Service, which does the same thing - but again, what are the lessons learned from nobody bothering with Namecoin?

(Namecoin is interesting, as it was literally the first altcoin. It hadn't occurred to anyone to fork the Bitcoin code and make their own coin until then.)