When use email for username and name suggestions is disabled, we could leave the username field blank at signup instead of suggesting userN — we’ve done something similar in our admin account signups on new Discourse sites.
Is that something you think you’d like to see for your site members, too, @ToddZ?
I would much prefer that, myself. I’d rather see people mash the keyboard and come up with a nonsense username (or hook into a username generator API) than end up with a bunch of userN.
I can’t quite imagine a reason to prefer userN, but if I’m missing something, maybe an optional setting could make everyone happy.