Jake Waskett said: [...]
Create and use a template for controversial articles, that says, in effect: "This is a highly controversial article. Before making any changes, please familiarise yourself with the discussion page, and add a comment describing your change and the justification for it." We should also link to WP:NPOV.
There are already one or two templates of this type kicking around--alerting editors to some specific controversy and pointing them at the talk page. Template:NPOV is the classic example of such a template.>
If that works, great! I doubt it will, but it won't hurt to try.
If it doesn't work, we can create a "3 unjustified edits rule", similar to the 3RR, and enforced in the same way. This need only be applied to articles with the controversial header.
This should help to some extent, as forcing descriptions and justifications will slow editors down and may also create a deterrent for edits that authors *know* are NPOV or are unwilling to discuss the matter. This may help get rid of the more rabid POV editors.
It would be easy enough to put some javascript into the site CSS to enforce edit comments (the default edit comment for a section which contains the section name could be checked and refused on its own). Regular editors would thus have to get used to annotating edits. Editors who enter nonsense would become known and their edits would tend to be watched more closely. The rest is all down to policy and dispute resolution. So no need to apply this only on some articles. It could be site-wide policy.
Comments? I'm running on very little sleep today, so if I'm talking rubbish, please tell me!
If you were, I think somebody would have noticed by now. :)