Page showing recently-purged usernames

[pne]

Title:
Page showing recently-purged usernames

Area:
newpage

Summary:
Create a new page showing purged usernames, as inspiration for people considering a rename.

Description:
LiveJournal has a page that shows purged usernames: http://www.livejournal.com/misc/expunged_list.bml

That page "is updated every day with new usernames that are up for grabs". There's a short list of usernames that became available in the last 24 hours and a big long list of random usernames that start with a particular letter or digit. You can then choose a different initial letter or digit, or click "See more random results" to get some more ideas. The order of the names on a given page seems to be roughly arbitrary.

It might be useful to have such a list on Dreamwidth, too, with similar features: show a list of usernames that are available for renaming to due to a purge.

The exact details might vary, but LiveJournal's implementation might be taken as a starting point.

Except that I'd like a bit more randomness if this is easily possible - when I first load the page (without applying a filter), I usually get names starting with "a0" or "a1"; a mix of "a0..a9, aa..az" would be nicer if this is easily possible. (Perhaps just a "select username from usertable where status = 'purged' limit 100" with no "order by" clause? Then for "see more random results", repeat the query with a "start at 101", "start at 201", etc.? Then they'd be in quasi-random order, presumably the order in which they were created.)

In http://dw-news.dreamwidth.org/31382.html?thread=3770518#cmt3770518, Denise said that purges happen comparatively rarely and the number of accounts that gets purged at each go is lower, so perhaps it's not quite as useful here as on LJ, but I wanted to suggest it anyway.

Perhaps one *can* find a nifty username from it!

Poll #8859 Page showing recently-purged usernames

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 84

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This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
35 (41.7%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
10 (11.9%)

(I have no opinion)
39 (46.4%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)