Is there a way to create a custom edit flag in MediaWiki?

Question

I moderate a wiki where many users use the AutoWikiBrowser to rapidly edit. This is fine but it makes it harder to locate and deal with vandalism via the recent changes. Is there any way that I can create a custom edit flag to mark edits as semi-automated and allow users to hide them from the recent changes? Ideally this would come with the ability to mark edits as semi-automated by default, which would allow the functionality I seek without needing a change to the AWB source code.

The ability to mark one's edits as semi-automated shouldn't be open to anyone, so it would need to be restricted to certain usergroups (probably rollback and up). I realise that there is the ability to mark edits as bot edits, but this is inaccurate as they are not truly bots, and inconvenient, since it requires a bureaucrat to mark the user as a bot, then unmark them when their editing is finished. I realise its a lot to request, and I certainly understand if its not possible, but I was hoping that it was.

Answer 1

Why not have users use two accounts - one for manual edits and one for bot edits? Or is that too much overhead for the users?

As you say, if your bots have their own accounts you can add them to the bot group. Then users can, in Recent Changes, decide themselves to show / hide bot edits.

Then your admins can patrol the changes as usual.