Manual:$wgRateLimits

Details
This setting provides a simple rate limiter to brake floods of edits and other potentially destructive behavior, like sending out emails to other users. It sets a maximum number of actions allowed in the given number of seconds; after that, the violating client receives HTTP 429 error page or other error message until the period elapses. Note that limits are generally counted per site, but some of the special limits are aggregated across all sites in a wiki farm, e.g. all Wikimedia wikis. To check if a rate limit has been exceeded, use the function.

The general syntax is:

There are some special additional limits:


 * - applies to unregistered users only, and applies by action and IP.
 * - applies to registered users only, and applies by action and user.
 * - (since 1.35) applies by action and registered user, counted across sites.
 * - applies to both unregistered and "newbie" users, and applies by action and user.
 * - applies to both unregistered and "newbie" users (i.e. users without the user right), and will limit total number of action from one IP regardless of specific users.  This will be enforced in addition to other limits, and is counted across sites.
 * - applies to both unregistered and "newbie" users, and will limit total number of action from the /24 (for IPv4) or /64 (for IPv6) range of IP. This will be enforced in addition to other limits, and is counted across sites
 * - applies to all users other than those whose user-specific limit (see below) is more permissive, and will limit total number of action from one IP regardless of specific users. This will be enforced in addition to other limits, and is counted across sites.
 * - applies to all users other than those whose user-specific limit is more permissive, and will limit total number of action from /24 or /64 range. This will be enforced in addition to other limits, and is counted across sites.

If there are multiple limit defined, the user-specific limit is defined as:


 * - if the user is a "newbie", or
 * The most permissive (i.e. with the highest action/timespan ratio) of limit and all applicable user group limits of the user, or
 * - for unregistered users.

All user groups defined in (for example,  ) will not be checked unless you explicitly assigned the user group to a specific user.

For example, to set a maximum of 4 edits per 60 seconds for "newbie" (i.e. non-autoconfirmed) users, add the following:

By setting the limitations for a specific action can be marked as not skippable. If that is set, neither the noratelimit user right nor the setting have any effect for that action.

Extensions can provide additional keys for $wgRateLimit. E.g. provides a "badcaptcha" key, which allows to throttle users based on the number of wrong answers they have given to a captcha. An example might be:

This will allow newbie users not more than 100 wrong answers per day (86400 seconds).

Rate Limit Message
After reaching the rate limit, either of two things will happen. For purges, the purge dialogue will disappear. For edits or rollbacks, editors will see the following message:

This message can be modified by editing MediaWiki:Actionthrottled and MediaWiki:Actionthrottledtext.

Version differences

 * The 'mailpassword' array was added in MediaWiki 1.7.0.


 * The 'emailuser' array was added in MediaWiki 1.10.0.


 * The 'linkpurge' array was added in MediaWiki 1.22.0.


 * The 'renderfile' array was added in MediaWiki 1.22.0.