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 500 error pages until the period elapses.

For example, to set a maximum of 4 edits per 60 seconds for "newbie" users, add the following:

This option does not work if a memory caching tool (other than memcached) is used - see bug 20595.

Version differences

 * The 'mailpassword' array was added in MediaWiki 1.7.0.
 * The 'emailuser' array was added in MediaWiki 1.10.0.