User blog comment:Master Ceadeus 27/A User's Guide To: Edit Wars!/@comment-3247345-20141028233719

The best way to avoid edit wars is having a clear source policy. It also shouldn't be edit warring to remove clear policy violations. If edit wars do occur where one side isn't clearly right per policy the best way to handle it is to encourage both sides to discuss the issue. Page protection, usually 24 hours or shorter, can force discussion of the issue. I generally revert to what it was before the edit war once protected to be neutral. I really dislike edit warring blocks because they don't solve the issue and they make it impossible to discuss the changes for the blocked user(s), which means the dispute would still be there when the block expires. The only time they should be used is if one or both sides is clearly unwilling to discuss the issue after prompting or the page is edited after the protection expires without a conclusion to the discussion being reached. That said it should be recognized the page protection does stop the development of a page. If a page is about to have major content added (like an episode is about to air on a wiki about a TV show) protection should be avoided, and edit warring blocks are the next best solution if you can't get the parties to discuss. Even then the blocks should only last until the editing spree dies down, usually after a day or two.