Could you please clarify what you're exactly asking for? Should the delay between single messages be configurable or what?

imho two things should be implemented:

1. control how many lines of commit message is passed, the rest is truncated (default 2-3?)
2. control how often each line is sent to avoid getting excess flood messages (2-3 lines immediately, after that add delay 1s, after 5 lines change it to be bigger, delay *= 2, and so exponentally grow the delay?)

but from your question i understand flood control is already implemented? just it got exceeded for me?

There's a delay of 0.5 secs after each line if I remember correctly, but there's no further flood control.
Cutting the response after a certain amount of lines and incrementally growing the the delay (I think exponentally is a bit harsh) sounds like a good idea.

What I see is somewhat related to flood protection but not for messages. As it looks like the bot is setting itself too often as being away:

Jan 21, 2014 5:28:22 AM hudson.plugins.ircbot.v2.PircListener onServerResponse
WARNING: IRC server responded error 429 Message:
jenkins-bot :Too Many aways - Flood Protection activated