Manual:$wgWhitelistEdit

Details
If true, users must login to edit.
 * It's not 100% safe, there could be a security hole using that one. Use at your own risks.

Mediawiki Version 1.5 and onwards
This setting was deprecated in version 1.5.0, and replaced by $wgGroupPermissions, specifically the 'edit' permission.

To emulate the old effect of setting: $wgWhitelistEdit = true; set: $wgGroupPermissions['*']['edit'] = false;

If $wgWhitelistRead is set, you must also disable the 'read' permission for it to take effect on anonymous users:

$wgWhitelistRead = array( "Main Page", "Special:Userlogin" ); $wgGroupPermissions['*']['read'] = false;