Manual:$wgRateLimits/en

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 pages until the period elapses. To check if a rate limit has been exceeded, use the User::pingLimiter function.

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.

must be set to a value other than CACHE_NONE for this setting to work.

Default value
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).

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.