For all of us in Snow Biomes.... we all know the annoyance of water freezing; but we can always just light it up nearby to keep it 'liquid'. But I often have the opposite problem, the ice I have placed throughout my residence - I have to place light sorces far enough away to avoid it melting and making a huge mess everywhere. So my suggestion is that a residential flag is made/found similar to firespread. I understand that this will be by no means be easy to do, but I would appreciate it. I dont know what the command name would be. But it would prevent ice melting/freezing/any other minecraft features that are inavertedly linked...
Not unless you had optifine and set it to EXTREME (sorry for caps but thats what it says when you do that )
Water will freeze if it has direct contact with the sky. You can go around 255 high and at level 256 make a huge glass ceiling so the water doesn't freeze. About it melting,I can't help.
Yes, we have established how to prevent water from feezing : glass, blocks, or light... Lwts not forget about the second part of this - how to keep ice from melting with a block of glowstone 2 blocks away