Quick and dirty script to randomly choose a user from a forum thread at BGG

pick_thread_user.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
from urllib.request import urlopen
import random
import time

def seed():

    t = int( time.time() * 1000.0 )

    random.seed( ((t & 0xff000000) >> 24) +
             ((t & 0x00ff0000) >>  8) +
             ((t & 0x0000ff00) <<  8) +
             ((t & 0x000000ff) << 24)   )


thread_id = '2137833'

thread_xml = urlopen('https://api.geekdo.com/xmlapi2/thread?id={}'.format(thread_id))

tree = ET.parse(thread_xml)
root = tree.getroot()

articles_tag = root.find("./articles")

users = []
for art in articles_tag.findall(".//article/."):
    user =art.attrib['username']
    if user not in ('squarepegsys','jdarnold'):
        users.append(user)


seed()
print(random.choice(users))