MicroWiki:Rate limits

Rate limits, or action throttles, are predetermined limits of numbers of actions a user can take in a specified time frame. Regular users are very unlikely to encounter them, unless they are using Wiki editing software such as AutoWikiBrowser or manually doing many short edits in a row.

Rationale

MicroWiki, like all wikis that use the MediaWiki engine, relies on human intervention to maintain the accuracy and integrity of its content. If a contributor makes unwanted edits, other contributors can easily revert or correct the edits.

However, this approach is only effective if the community can keep up with the pace of unwanted edits. Malicious or buggy bots can make edits much faster than a human can by hand, and may even outpace a large community of editors trying to clean up their mistakes.

To address these issues, the MediaWiki software includes tools such as user blocks and edit throttling. A user block can prevent edits from a specific IP address associated with bot software, while edit throttling limits the number of edits that can be made by a single user or IP address within a certain timeframe.

Together, both methods present a useful tool for combating vandalism and bad faith actors from giving Wiki users extra work in cleaning up their mess.

Rate limits for specific actions

MicroWiki currently does not employ any differences to ratelimits based on user roles, with the exception of the bot and the admin/sysop user permissions, which have no rate limits.

Action	Rate limit
Edit	90 edits every 60 seconds
Move	8 moves every 60 seconds
Upload	8 uploads every 60 seconds
Rollback	10 rollbacks every 60 seconds
Purge cache	30 purges every 60 seconds
Changing content model	8 changes every 60 seconds

Requesting to be removed from rate limits

Users can request to be exempt from rate limits only after they run into the rate limits, requesting them to be lifted pre-emptively will not be granted. A level of trust will also need to be established, since disabling rate limits is very dangerous and could cause issues with mass vandalism.