Interesting idea, but rather than assigning picks, might be nearly as good to simply have members of the cooperating group register their picks, so that they ca

Interesting idea, but rather than assigning picks, might be nearly as good to simply have members of the cooperating group register their picks, so that they can avoid wasteful duplication. Then, when someone proposes a duplicate, suggest to them either the minimal-change-for-uniqueness, or the-best-yet-unclaimed from the pool analysis. In fact they could offer both to appeal to a wider range of participants, and perhaps offer a software tool (like a bookmarklet) to make the dup-check/autosuggest as easy as possible.