An username will always be available, there are just too many combinations possible.
However, the most common names, often the most wanted names, are already taken. I do agree that these names should be released, if an user has not been online for, let's say 2 years. Give him a randomized name in return, like user103230409.
But then again, this will never happen, so why bother.
The site's only had 7 to 8 million 'members' (well, most of those were one-time visitors I suspect). If handles were limited to numerals (they're not), then merely 7 digits would suffice to take care of >10 million 'members' (if you include letters, 5 characters would amply suffice).
I'm not seeing the problem (until the site's 'members'/visitors, pass 5 billion or so). I suppose someone's concerned about being unable to register as Jim, Jane or Joe (names that I expect were taken earlier)?
sftac
ps. Perhaps long dormant user names (> 2 years unused?) could be 'applied for'? An alert message sent to the user about someone wanting their handle and if they do not respond or use the handle within the coming year, the requester gets that handle. Does that sound fair enough?
It's like the free email sites (gmail and hotmail, etc). You can come up with a random name you think would never, ever have been thought of by someone else, like "paper_stovetop_hammer_duck" and it will tell you "I'm sorry but paper_stovetop_hammer_duck" is already taken, you might try "paper_stovetop_hammer_duck062451".
An username will always be available, there are just too many combinations possible.
However, the most common names, often the most wanted names, are already taken. I do agree that these names should be released, if an user has not been online for, let's say 2 years. Give him a randomized name in return, like user103230409.
But then again, this will never happen, so why bother.
But for every passing generation of chess.com users, new names would have to be given. That would make the extinction date come even faster!
My username was going to be RedLightningStrike because I use that name for a lot of things online, but then it said it was taken!! How in the world could someone else think of using that name?
So then I added my favorite number, 27. It doesn't nearly sound as cool, if RedLightningStrike was even cool.
I think it's the case that even though a chess.com member deletes his/her account, his/her username is still found around chess.com in the form of forum contrubutions (among other things). I also know that no two chess.com members can have the same username.
This leads to my question: doesn't that mean that people many years later who want to join chess.com cannot because there won't be any usernames left for them to use since they've gone extinct?
If so, how will this site continue to gain members in the future? Will the entire site have to be reset? Or will there be an "expiry date" for usernames of deleted accounts?