Tony Sidaway wrote
I dispute any suggestion that protection of a page is in any way *less* drastic than blocking a user. If a page is protected, *nobody* can edit it. If one or two over-enthusiastic revert warriors are blocked for up to a day, only their potential edits are lost--and since they're likely to be holding up editing by their reverts, their loss is often a very good thing.
Charles Matthews wrote:
That omits the edits to other pages blocked users cannot make.
Page protection is unpopular; temp-banning 3RR violaters seems to have a good consensus behind it. This displays a rational attitude to the content of the page in question, I think. Edit warring usually stops the development of a page right in its tracks, often for the sake of a part of the whole that is not that significant.
Well of course page protection is unpopular and banning has a "good consensus'--page protection affects *me* but banning affects *them*. :)
But consider that page protection can be short--just long enough, if the participants calm down, for the admin to look at the situation and put a few choice comments and suggestions on the article talk, and see if he s/he can get some feedback as to how to proceed. Yes, this is some work for the admin, but the admin cannot take a step like that and walk away. In fact, one admin who did that (among other things) was de-admined. With the 3RR block, the admin is walking away: the "winning" side is satisfied, and the "loser" stews in his/her juices for 24 hours. This is easy but doesn't contribute to Wikipedia, the community, or the encyclopedia.
--C