What if you ran the auction only when you had at least 5 or 10 'good' names? Someone has to be the arbiter of that. Second, what if it ran 24 hours not 1 hour. That would allow for the distributed way that many people use a forum.
Here is how to get more people: for whatever format you use, is have a one-time signup. Right now you get email updates AFTER you have posted to a thread. Why not have this auction be a special thread so everyone gets notified who wants to be part of it. I would really like that. so even if I had not signed in to dnf for days or weeks i would get an email when an auction is going to occur. There should be 2 emails, once a day ahead and one an hour ahead. You only have to signup once, for all future auctions.