How to Randomize a List Fairly, Pick Winners, and Reproduce Results (Seeded Shuffle)

If you’ve ever shuffled names for a giveaway, randomized quiz questions, or tried to pick a fair sample from a dataset, you’ve probably run into two problems. First, people don’t trust “random” unless you can explain it. Second, you often need repeatable results, especially for audits, reruns, or “show me the same winners again”.

This guide shows a clean workflow for both: fair randomization and repeatable randomization.

Use the tool : https://networkwhois.com/randomize-lines 

What “fair shuffle” actually means

A fair shuffle means every line has the same chance to end up in any position. Your tool uses Fisher–Yates, which is the standard unbiased shuffle approach. 

That matters because a lot of “randomizers” online do sloppy shuffles that can bias results, especially on longer lists.

Scenario 1: Randomize a list of names (simple shuffle)

Paste one item per line:

Ana
George
Mihai
Ioana
Radu
Elena

Recommended options for clean data:

• Enable Trim whitespace if your list was copied from a sheet. 

• Enable Ignore empty lines to avoid blank entries. 

Click Randomize Lines.

Example output (your output will differ):

Ioana
Elena
George
Ana
Radu
Mihai

Scenario 2: Keep the header line fixed (CSV-style lists)

If your first line is a header, you usually want it untouched.

Input:

Name
Ana
George
Mihai
Ioana

Enable Keep first line fixed (header). 

Now only the rows below will shuffle.

Why this matters: it prevents you from breaking imports where the first line must stay as a column name.

Scenario 3: Pick winners, not just shuffle

Sometimes you don’t need the whole list shuffled, you just need 3 winners, without repeats.

Use Pick N random lines and set N to the number of winners you want. The tool selects without replacement, so you don’t get the same winner twice. 

Example:

• Pick N random lines: 3

This is cleaner than shuffling everything and manually copying the first three lines.

Scenario 4: Make results reproducible using a seed

If you want to prove “we didn’t reroll until we liked the results”, use a seed.

• Enter a value in Seed (optional). 

• With the same input and the same seed, you’ll get the same output again. 

Example seed ideas:

• a date like 2026-01-15

• a ticket ID like giveaway-1042

• a public reference like post-8391

This makes giveaways and sampling defensible. Anyone can repeat your shuffle if you share the input and seed.

Common mistakes that make shuffles look “wrong”

• “It doesn’t look random.” Random sequences often look patterned. Run it again or change the seed. 

• Duplicate entries in the input. Shuffling doesn’t remove duplicates. If your list has repeated names, dedupe first with your Remove Duplicate Lines tool. 

• Hidden whitespace causes “different” items. Enable trimming so “George” and “George ” don’t behave like two different values.

Try it now

Shuffle fairly, keep headers safe, pick winners, and use a seed when you need repeatable results: https://networkwhois.com/randomize-lines