Controversial articles must not be constantly backlogged because reviewers are afraid of getting drawn into an edit war.
I get the impression from this statement that traditional full dispute protection will still be needed. Will this still be available?
Yes, ordinary full protection is still available, as is ordinary semi-protection.
There is also the new full-flagged-protection where instead of using {{editprotected}} you can edit the draft and wait for an admin to flag. I don't know if this will actually be used very often, since it doesn't really stop edit wars.
OT: Is there any way I can make my messages thread properly without having all messages sent to my email? I prefer to read the web archive.