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Subtle vandalism: You won't find any rock art depicting Jar'Edo Wen on the walls of caves in the Kimberley. Photo: Greg Totman

It has survived unchallenged for almost a decade, but Wikipedia editors have finally caught up with, and removed, an entry created by an anonymous Australian contributor who concocted a fake Aboriginal deity named Jar'Edo Wens.

Jar'Edo Wens is, of course a creatively formatted version of the name "Jared Owens".

Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia. Photo: John Davidson

It's a ruse that seems so obvious once it has been pointed out, but which has lived as an accepted fact on one of the world's most visited websites since the entry was created at 1.42pm on Sunday, May 29, 2005.

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"In Australian Aboriginal mythology, Jar'Edo Wens is a god of earthly knowledge and physical might, created by Altjira to oversee that the people did not get too big-headed, associated with victory and intelligence," the now officially expunged Wikipedia article reads.

The article, which has taken the record for the longest-lived Wikipedia hoax to date, remained unchallenged for nine years and nine months, pipping the previous record-holder by a matter of days. It was created by an anonymous editor using an Australian IP address.

The hoax article still remains unchallenged on several non-English language Wikipedia pages and has even rated a mention in a book,Atheism And The Case Against Christ. Thenon-fiction book is written by California State University-Sacramento philosophy professor Matthew McCormick and is published by Prometheus Books.

Details about the hoax discovery werefirst published on the Wikipediocracywebsite, a publication with a mission to "inoculate the unsuspecting public against the torrent of misinformation, defamation, and general nonsense that issues forth from one of the world's most frequently visited websites".

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Aussies Jar'Edo Wens prank sets new record as Wikipedias longest-running hoax