Wikipedia moderators scramble to remove postings by users naming protected celebrities
Site pledges to lock profile pages in bid to keep the identities from being published again
Online encyclopedia's servers are in America - so the site is not liable
Four celebrities hiding behind injunctions to prevent details of their private lives being made public have been named on Wikipedia.
Users of the online encyclopedia, which allows anyone to edit it, have published details of the gagging orders on the profiles of the public figures concerned.
Although the site's moderators scrambled to remove the postings, they kept reappearing - up to ten times on one of the celebrities' profiles.
Now removed, the allegations still appear in the history of the pages.
The identity of the Premier League star who allegedly had an affair with Big Brother contestant Imogen Thomas became secret after he gained his super-injunction two weeks ago.
The high-profile actor is alleged to have had sex with the same prostitute who slept with Wayne Rooney, while the first TV star - who is a household name - has suppressed 'intimate' photographs of him with a woman.
THE GAGGING ORDERS
THE FOOTBALLER: A Premier League star and family man who allegedly had a six-month fling with Big Brother's Imogen Thomas.
THE ACTOR: A high profile star alleged to have had a fling with Helen Wood, the same prostitute that Wayne Rooney slept with.
TV STAR I: Another family man and household name who has suppressed 'intimate' photographs of him with a woman.
TV STAR II: This personality won a super-injunction to gag his ex-wife from claiming she had an affair with him after he remarried.
Comments on the profile of the second TV celebrity were were also removed after they hinted the star had won a super-injunction to gag his ex-wife, who claimed she had an affair with him after he remarried.
The star denies the claims and has made his own allegations of blackmail.
The postings come as debate rages over the use of injunctions, with lawyers and commentators arguing that they are redundant in the age of sites such as Twitter and Facebook, where anyone can post the names of those hiding behind the gagging orders.
Even BBC presenter Andrew Marr, who himself won a gagging order preventing the details of his extra-marital affair from being made public, this week said injunctions were 'out of control' and called for a 'proper sense of proportion' in injunction cases.
A spokesman for Wikipedia said that although the site was based in the U.S.A and therefore not bound by injunctions, it would continue to remove any further allegations posted on the profiles in question.
'The servers are based in the U.S. so Wikipedia is not liable. Our material has to be really well referenced or it is chucked out immediately.'