Reddit on Monday addressed the controversy surrounding the Internet sleuths who crowd sourced the search for the Boston Marathon bombers, admitting that the effort got out of hand.

"Though started with noble intentions, some of the activity on reddit fueled online witch hunts and dangerous speculation which spiraled into very negative consequences for innocent parties," Erik Martin, Reddit.com general manager, wrote in a blog post. "The reddit staff and the millions of people on reddit around the world deeply regret that this happened."

That speculation included questions about whether one of the two suspects identified by the FBI was missing Brown University student Sunil Trapathi, who was not involved in the attacks and is still missing.

"We have apologized privately to the family of ... Trapathi, as have various users and moderators," Martin wrote. "We want to take this opportunity to apologize publicly for the pain they have had to endure. We hope that this painful event will be channeled into something positive and the increased awareness will lead to Sunil's quick and safe return home. We encourage everyone to join and show your support to the Trapathi family and their search."

In the immediate aftermath of the bombings, which took place one week ago today, members of Reddit, 4chan, and other sites encouraged users to post photos and videos from the marathon online. The idea was that Internet users might spot evidence that would be of use to law enforcement, but in some cases, it ended up confusing things further. A high school track student and his coach, for example, were unfairly singled out and actually ended up on the Thursday cover of The New York Post next to the headline "Bag Men." The paper was eventually forced to issue an apology.

Over the weekend, meanwhile, officials told The Washington Post that the FBI's decision to release photos and video of the suspects on Thursday afternoon was done "in part to limit the damage being done to people who were wrongly being targeted as suspects in the news media and on the Internet."

For three years, Reddit has banned users from posting personal information on the site. "This was because 'let's find out who this is' events frequently result in witch hunts, often incorrectly identifying innocent suspects and disrupting or ruining their lives," Martin said.

Moderators hoped that the Boston Marathon crowd-sourcing effort would not result in the same type of behavior, but "we were wrong," Martin said today. "The search for the bombers bore less resemblance to the types of vindictive internet witch hunts our no-personal-information rule was originally written for, but the outcome was no different."

Martin pushed users to "strive to show good judgment and solidarity."

"Reddit was born in the Boston area (Medford, MA to be precise). After this week, which showed the best and worst of reddit's potential, we hope that Boston will also be where reddit learns to be sensitive of its own power," he concluded.

Martin also shared some traffic stats from the past week, revealing that the high point was when the second suspect was captured on Friday night, when 272,000 users were on the site and 85,000 were in the news update thread.

"This was the only time in reddit's history other than the Obama AMA, that a thread beat the frontpage in the ratings," Martin said.

For more, check out Hats Off to Reddit for Boston Bomb Sleuthing and Did Twitter 'Own' the Boston Story Last Night?