What is a Wikipedia edit war and how do you avoid one?

An edit war is what happens when editors repeatedly revert each other on a contested change without taking the dispute to the Talk page. Wikipedia’s response is structural: the bold-revert-discuss convention sends a contested edit to discussion the first time it gets reverted, the three-revert rule (3RR) prohibits more than three reverts on the same article in a 24-hour period, and persistent edit warring leads to administrator intervention and editor blocks. For disclosed COI editors working on a client’s article, the discipline is unambiguous: never engage in reverts directly. Open a Talk page section, cite the relevant policy (NPOV, sourcing, undue weight), propose the change with reliable secondary sources, and wait for community editors to evaluate and implement. The patience pays back as durable consensus rather than a reverted edit.