Wikipedia
WikiScanner (also known as Wikipedia Scanner) was a publicly searchable database that linked millions of anonymous edits on the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia to the organizations where those edits apparently originated, by cross-referencing the edits with data on the owners of the associated block of IP addresses (WikiScanner did not investigate edits made under a username.) It was created by Virgil Griffith and released on August 14, 2007. In his "WikiScanner FAQ" Griffith stated his belief that WikiScanner could help make Wikipedia more reliable for controversial topics. He also indicated that he had never been employed by the Wikimedia Foundation and claimed his work on WikiScanner was "100% noncommercial." On December 21, 2012, a research group from released an open-source clone of WikiScanner called WikiWatchdog.
, attempts to run "WikiScanner Classic" from wikiscanner.virgil.gr returned to the WikiScanner home page, which identified itself as "WIKIWATCHER.COM"; and invoking "WikiScanner2 Preview" led to a "failure to load the page due to timeout" error.
In the end, Virgil Griffith says he had to take wikiscanner.gr down, as it was costing him "several thousand USD per month."