Wikipedia's editors have implemented a semi-protection policy for certain articles in a bid to curtail vandalism and malicious entries in the free online encyclopaedia.

Essentially, the measure prevents newly registered users and all unregistered users from editing pages.

However, the editors said that semi-protection is only to be applied if a page is facing a serious vandalism problem.

"It is not an appropriate solution to editorial disputes of any kind since it may restrict some editors and not others," said Wikipedia.

Administrators of the encyclopaedia may apply semi-protection in the same manner as for current full protection against vandalism, either on their own initiative or following an alert on an article's forum page.

Semi-protection is only to be applied as a response to serious vandalism and not as a pre-emptive measure against the threat or probability of vandalism, such as when certain pages suddenly become high profile due to current events.

The move follows the implementation of stricter editorial practices caused by recent controversy when a high profile article was found to contain malicious misinformation.

At present, unregistered users have been temporarily blocked from creating new articles, while today's move signifies a reassessment of the open editing policy, but to a lesser degree.

The official policy can be read here.