The students created a website and a fictitious entry on English Wikipedia about Edward Owens, purportedly a Virginia oyster fisherman born in 1853 who became a pirate.
The blog asserted that Owens fell on hard times during the Long Depression of the 1870s and took up piracy in Chesapeake Bay to survive.
The students wrote that he robbed smaller commercial vessels and wealthy pleasure boaters from Maryland, threatening his victims with a punt gun.
[9] According to Lisa's post, the trunk belonged to a relative, Joseph Scafe, (also called 'Uncle Joe'), and that it contained—in a false panel—ladies' jewelry and a "disturbing" journal.
With a new sock puppet, DisturbedThrowaway, the students attempted to start the spread of the hoax with a posting of a question on AskReddit: "Do you think my uncle Joe was just weird or possibly a serial killer?".
DisturbedThrowaway, the poster of the question, claimed to have found the names of two victims, Alice Walsh and Diamond Flossie, in the documents she retrieved.
[10] With the latest hoax exposed, Wikipedia deleted the two entries about Alice Walsh and Diamond Flossie which had been written by the students' sock puppets.
Kelly did not express regret in this matter, "I don't think there were any real victims here", he blogged: I will also continue to teach Lying About the Past.
[13] However, as of February 2015, Kelly continues to delve into topics dealing with editing and/or manipulating Wikipedia in his digital history class[14] at George Mason University.