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A comment on Instead of deleting account, NYT appends ‘1000’ to username and email address.

Re:Instead of deleting account, NYT appends ‘1000’ to userna... by throwaway882321 on Tuesday April 28, 2020 @05:33AM (#23005245)
Why 1000? Probably arbitrary but I can't help but wonder why 1000 instead of the faster 1111 or 1234, perhaps someone using NumPad?
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Re:Instead of deleting account, NYT appends ‘1000’ to userna... by srg0 on Tuesday April 28, 2020 @06:09AM (#23005451)
Because the change was done manually.

Their system probably doesn't implement a function to delete account, or it is not easily discoverable in the UI, or it is known to be bugged. So the employee who did that thought that renaming an account was a good idea to make it appear "missing". A big numeric suffix is an obvious idea to avoid collisions with the existing and future accounts.

But when people are asked to choose a large number, numbers around 1000 and its multiples are chosen particularly often. So 999, 1000 and 1001 are very likely numbers to be picked "randomly". I don't find the reference on that, but I suppose we all have enough anecdotal evidence. Just recall what are the common port numbers of various programs. X*1000 + Y is a very common formula, where |Y| < 100.

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Re:Instead of deleting account, NYT appends ‘1000’ to userna... by willis936 on Tuesday April 28, 2020 @07:14AM (#23005831)
I really doubt someone who thought the solution to being unable to delete an account is to change the account name put this much thought into what to change the account name to.
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Re:Instead of deleting account, NYT appends ‘1000’ to userna... by isoprophlex on Tuesday April 28, 2020 @06:48AM (#23005674)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law

Maybe this is what you're looking for?

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Re:Instead of deleting account, NYT appends ‘1000’ to userna... by recursive on Tuesday April 28, 2020 @09:57AM (#23006979)
That's about numbers from "real-life" distributions, so that's a different thing.
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