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 (BRD, the norm that a bold edit, once reverted, goes to discussion rather than back into the article) sends a contested edit to discussion the first time it gets reverted, the three-revert rule (3RR, which prohibits more than three reverts on the same article in a 24-hour period) leads to blocks when broken, 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, Wikipedia’s neutral-point-of-view rule; 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.