wikiscanner.virgil.gr Virgil Griffith's current page
Commercial
No
Registration
No
Launched
August 13, 2007; 16 years ago (2007-08-13)
Current status
Offline
WikiScanner (also known as Wikipedia Scanner) was a publicly searchable database that linked anonymous edits on Wikipedia to the organizations where those edits apparently originated. It did this by cross-referencing the edits with data on the owners of the associated block of IP addresses, though it did not investigate edits made under a username. It was created by Virgil Griffith and released on August 13, 2007.[1][2]
In his "WikiScanner FAQ" Griffith stated his belief that WikiScanner could help make Wikipedia more reliable for controversial topics.[3] He also indicated that he had never been employed by the Wikimedia Foundation and claimed his work on WikiScanner was "100% noncommercial".[3]
On December 21, 2012, a research group from Fondazione Bruno Kessler [it] released an open-source clone of WikiScanner called WikiWatchdog.
By April 2013, attempts to run "WikiScanner Classic" from wikiscanner.virgil.gr returned to the WikiScanner home page, which identified itself as "WIKIWATCHER.COM"; and invoking "WikiScanner2 PreviewNew!" led to a "failure to load the page due to timeout" error.[4]
In 2007, Virgil Griffith said he had to take WikiScanner down, as it was costing him "several thousand USD per month."[5] He added below this on his WikiScanner webpage that as a grad student at Caltech in 2008 he developed with the aid of several undergraduates "a suite of Wikipedia-related tools known collectively as "WikiWatcher" which included: WikiScanner2 (Daniel), Wikiganda (Rishi), Poor Man's Checkuser, and BeaverScope," which he launched at the Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) conference that year. They used used "high-quality data" from Quova, and among them WikiWatcher "had some media successes, but when the summer was over there was no one to maintain the tools and they fell into disrepair."[5]
^Biuso, Emily (December 9, 2007). "Wikiscanning". The New York Times. Retrieved December 9, 2007. When Virgil Griffith, a 24-year-old hacker, heard reports that Congressional staff members had been caught altering Wikipedia for the benefit of their boss, he got to thinking of all the other kinds of spin occurring on the site.
^Borland, John (August 14, 2007). "See Who's Editing Wikipedia - Diebold, the CIA, a Campaign". Wired. Retrieved September 15, 2012.
^ abGriffith, Virgil. "WikiScanner FAQ". Archived from the original on August 30, 2007. Retrieved August 18, 2007.
^"WikiScanner2 PreviewNew!". Archived from the original on September 22, 2010. Accessibility of WikiScanner can be checked on the web page Archived April 8, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
^ ab"Virgil Griffith's WikiScanner Page". Archived from the original on March 14, 2016.
clone of WikiScanner called WikiWatchdog. By April 2013, attempts to run "WikiScanner Classic" from wikiscanner.virgil.gr returned to the WikiScanner home...
game series Scanners, a 1981 science fiction horror film "Scanners" (Superstore), an episode of the television series Superstore WikiScanner, a tool that...
Scientology as an abusive cult or religion, and continued through the decade. WikiScanner, a publicly searchable database that linked anonymous edits on Wikipedia...
everyone hailed WikiScanner as a success for Wikipedia. Oliver Kamm, in a column for The Times, argued instead that: The WikiScanner is thus an important...
to the internet IP addresses edits were made from. Most of the edits WikiScanner found were minor or harmless, but further analysis detected more controversial...
proxy along with Aaron Swartz, and created the Wikipedia indexing tool WikiScanner. He has published papers on artificial life and integrated information...
everyone hailed WikiScanner as a success for Wikipedia. Oliver Kamm, in a column for The Times, argued instead that: The WikiScanner is thus an important...
caught Wiki-watching – National". The Age. "PM's staff sanitise Wikipedia – Technology". The Sydney Morning Herald. August 24, 2007. "'Wikiscanner' reveals...
Corporation. August 27, 2007. Retrieved September 5, 2010. (discusses the WikiScanner data in the editing of this Wikipedia article on Wendi ) (in Chinese)...
a Caltech computation and neural-systems graduate student, created WikiScanner, a searchable database that linked changes made by anonymous Wikipedia...
online inaccuracy". In 2007 PR Week ran a story documenting the use of WikiScanner to track anonymous edits and link them to organizations through their...
coincided with the English Wikipedia reaching 2 million articles and WikiScanner attaining mainstream publicity.[citation needed] Wikirage used the edit...
multilingual, mobile interface to Wikipedia La révolution Wikipédia – WikiScanner – Speakapedia – The Truth According to Wikipedia – Truth in Numbers?...
2D view to visualize the location-based service edits. Real-time web WikiScanner "Wikipedia Tracks Changes to Encyclopedia". National Public Radio. November...
website. Online anonymity is also limited by IP addresses. For example, WikiScanner associates anonymous Wikipedia edits with the IP address that made the...
examples)'". MailScanner. Retrieved 2009-04-21. MailScanner home page MailScannerWiki (documentation website) OSS Watch - MailScanner: a case study in...
Climatic Research Unit email controversy. In August 2007, a new utility, WikiScanner, revealed that English Wikipedia articles relating to Fox News had been...
computer security professionals. Michael Lynn (Ciscogate), Virgil Griffith (Wikiscanner), Billy Hoffman (Ajax Security), and Dolemite (organizer of PhreakNIC)...
Wikipedia Review to help construct a report, published in Nexus, on WikiScanner and allegations that intelligence agencies had been using Wikipedia to...
images, electronic text, or electronic books (e-books) by using an image scanner. Large scale book scanning projects have made many books available online...
Defense for wrongful termination. In 2007, the now defunct database Wikiscanner revealed that computers from the CIA had been used to edit articles on...
publisher and activist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. He came to wide international attention in 2010 when WikiLeaks published a series of leaks from...
member of Makers Local 256 Virgil Griffith (Class of 2002) - Creator of WikiScanner, convicted for assisting North Korea in evading international sanctions...
using wildcard characters where differences lie. These wildcards allow the scanner to detect viruses even if they are padded with extra, meaningless code...