Talk:Handle System

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Notability

How notable is this, really? For a system that has been around since at least 2003 and which is an Internet technology, there is remarkably little on the Internet about it. It does not seem that it has gotten any traction, or even much attention in over 15 years, almost forever on Internet timescales. Almost all the references in this article are to information on handle.net itself. It doesn't seem that anybody thinks it is important enough even to be bothered discussing it. The only real user of handle.net seems to be DOI. Norman Paskin, the person who contributed most of the article, says on his user page that he is a consultant to the organization (CNRI) which created Handle.net, and is one of the authors of the RFC's on DOI. So this looks a little bit like self-promotion, in a genteel sort of way. 73.253.110.94 (talk) 16:45, 29 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

How much does there need to be on it? It's straightforward, it works, it's widely adopted. You could say that domain names are too simple to be notable too, because little needs to be said to explain them, but it doesn't stop them being pretty crucial. Andy Dingley (talk) 17:55, 29 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Well the question was precisely how widely adopted is it? I'm asking. It was adopted for DOI resolution. Anything else? If only DOI, there has been enough time for it to be more than that, and you have to conclude that it is just another piece of grandiose middleware that was going to take over the world and, unsurprisingly, didn't go anywhere, now meriting no more than a couple of paragraphs in the DOI article. So what else? If there isn't anything, then this should just be merged into the DOI article. 73.253.110.94 (talk) 21:02, 29 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Obviously I've no idea. It's part of it that there's little support for listing valid prefixes, you're assumed to know yours already. There's presumably some way to find out from the registry, but it's not something that any of my clients support.

Is it adopted at a high level? Of course - just look at stuff like this: https://standards.data.gov.uk/proposal/handle-system-or-digital-object-identifiers

Personally I've used several different handles, not just DOI, but they have all tended to be around academic publishing (It's just where I've happened to work with them). DSpace uses them, various large journals or online libraries use them as their own identifier (often to a resource with specific licensing), rather than a generic DOI.

It's a reasonable question to ask "How widely used are Handles?" (and it's more legwork than I have time to invest) but to frame that in terms of WP:N? That's beyond question. Andy Dingley (talk) 22:22, 29 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps "notable" was the wrong choice of words, since it seems to carry a special meaning on Wikipedia. However, it certainly does seem that the Handle System and DOI's are joined at the hip, even if the Handle System originally had broader aspirations. Perhaps the articles should be merged? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.253.110.94 (talk) 12:39, 30 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'd definitely keep them separate. A merged article would become less clear as to what was "handles" and what was "DOI". We had this when they first appeared (we were one of the very first to use them) - lots of confusion from people as to what was a DOI (and so was under someone else's control) and what was simply generic "handles", so was something that we could manage ourselves, and impose our own practices on. I think this was why it became quite prevalent to use separate "large academic library" prefixes, as they could represent the same underlying resource (which probably had a DOI) as separate publications and usage conditions. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:28, 30 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Andy Dingley for explaining [in your "15:28, 30 January 2017 (UTC)" comment] the reasons[reply]

for being careful not to get confused between handles "in general" and the specific "use case" of 'DOI's,

and

why some users of the handle system may tend to choose something other than DOIs

I do not know whether it would be appropriate for this article (or maybe the article [about] DOIs?) to also mention that. However, if there is a chance that it would be helpful, then ... maybe someone (probably someone who knows more than I do, about this stuff!) should go ahead and either

start editing,

or (at least)

start a new section of this "Talk:" page (or of the DOI "Talk:" page?), to seek some consensus.

Rock on.. --Mike Schwartz (talk) 20:52, 14 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]