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Comment by Hakeemmidan | Hacker News Reader

This doesn't seem to work [to me]. I searched my GitHub username and it shows that it's available although I currently use it.

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I get people complaining about Facebook user search but not Github. I'm using this API to check GitHub username availability.

https://api.github.com/users/yournamehere

Tell me the above one is working for you or not?

Not them, but I see the same thing.

When I try the api link, I get back an ID and a bunch of other data. If I put something random in it, I get message: not found

Oh I got it. There is multiple reason that can happen and I called those are Ghosts accounts. There is high chance if you request to GitHub they will grant use it.

Chiming in here — not sure about this. I checked for a name that showed as "available" on the link above. I requested the owner of that Github handle a year ago if they were willing to release it to me, as they have zero public repos on there. Long story short, they didn't.

No chance that Github will take the handle off them and give it to us too.

My point is, this is definitely a bug, since the above account is not a ghost account.

> those are Ghost accounts… high chance if you request to GitHub they will grant use

From sibling comment:

    wheybags 0 minutes ago | root | parent | next [–]

    My username is wheybags on github, I actively use the account, 
    both public and private repos, and it shows as available on your site.

This doesn’t sound like a ghost account.

More to the point, I’m reasonably aggressive about registering my preferred nick, and your site thinks it is available where it is definitely in use by me.

GitHub shows available, it is not.

Based on what comes up as green vs. red when I test your site, it occurs to me you may be failing to detect the difference between public and private preference settings. For instance, if someone turned off public search preference, or public graph.

When I try the api link with my account*, I get the data returned.

On the site, it says my account is available.

When I put something random on the api link, it returned the not found message.

This is also not working for me on Github, Facebook and Instagram...

I don't think it has anything to do with Ghost accounts, maybe your app has reached some quota limit...

My username is wheybags on github, I actively use the account, both public and private repos, and it shows as available on your site.

That API finds my username. Your page still shows it as available :)

Same issue for my username as well

See my other comment. It happen to a few accounts. Those are inactive accounts and I hope you can claim it.

I'm not sure that's correct. My account is very definitely active on GitHub, but you're showing it as available.

https://api.github.com/users/myname shows myname as being active. The "updated_at" field shows 2021-11-16. Unless you're counting a 4-month break as being a "ghost account," there's some error.

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Edit: And, in case you are counting a 4-month break as a "ghost," I looked up the most prolific GitHub user (according to some list), fabpot, and your site is also showing his name as available.

My account is definitely not inactive (I've done multiple pushes to it yesterday and today) and the API you're using confirms I'm active yet it still shows as available on your site. So there's definitely a bug in your code somewhere.

Aside from that though, this is a neat idea. If you can iron out the kinks you should be on to a really good platform here.

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