Automatic afk-kick?

[Motte]

I am not saying nor do I want to imply that all our admins are incompetent with the following, but they are only humans after all, with all strenghts and weaknesses. And sometimes humans tend to prefer people they like share things with, like a house. Best example: Reports of well known players or players in well respected houses. If you see a usual player, like f.e. brutus getting reported, even without pictures, they player gets warned in the end and also can completelly forget about his reputation, as everyone will consider him an evil afker. CC_Clair_Grube has been reported of lately, with a picture of being afk and what happens? "Well, she's in the open field, easy to hit. Closed" (a bit shorter than the original statement, I have to admit that), without further ado. Well, it might be true that afk-ing without a shield and without hiding is a bit unsafe and does not help leeching all that much, on the other hand it is still a person that takes up a slot that could have been taken by an active player, who fulfills a role and helps the team.
Yet another case I have seen was some player (DP_Gerhard) admitting that he was doing nothing but only waiting for jotnes and his chance of looting some scales (yes, I have a screen of that, but I dont know if posting it will do any good..). To my knowledge an admin (dont recall exactly who it was, should have taken a screen of that, too, you might say; true..) was online by that time, but nothing happened. Anyway, human beings tend to fail duty when it comes to some kind of affection involved in the case. Please note, I am not here to blame you for human behavior, after all these were some cases out of many, also none of you are being paid for helping organize servers, doing it all due to kindness and not selfish motivation or something like that. I am just saying that there might be a better way to deal with it. Or are you happy with "unpopular" players being punished the way every player should be punished and "popular" players getting away alot of stuff? Reminds me of the animal farm saying that starts with "All animals are equal, but some.....".

But as Tarimoth said on the report I was talking about in the upper part: We need to define a line to where it is ok to afk, as people going afk are an issue on almost every server. Once you define a line/rule, you also have to see to people following it (why else would you put a rule?!), so you need a motivation for people to abide the rule or a punishment for people bending/breaking it. Usually last mentioned will end up in reports, in which well known and friends-to-admin-people have an unfair advantage compared to people like brutus, who - and that was not only my impression - seems to be incapable of speaking or understanding english to full extent. Maybe he was not even afk all the time, just did wait for someone to tell him what to do in a way he understands rather than doing something wrong (and you all know that some people tend to rip people apart for smallest mistakes..).
An auto-kick-function would solve that problem: No more reports necessary, no more human failure possible. No feelings, no preferation, but cold facts - f.e. 3 minutes not chatting, moving, fighting and youre out. No more severe punishment for afking, no more fully crowded servers, where only half of the players fulfill active roles, no more frustrated people waiting for their chance to join a good fight on mountain pass or the like and no more idiots saying "Afk for 10 minutes" right before Thor-wave (happens more often than you might think..).
Of course, this would not solve the leeching-problem as long as they move their mouse a bit any 179 seconds, but as you already said: We got admins for that kind of stuff, whereas issues where objective data is at hand, could just as well be processed by a machine.

@Kwal: I dont see any problems when it comes to shielders. Ive been shielder for quite a while before I switched my main char with an alt and in my oppinion a shielder that just stands there, is doing something wrong. Given the fact that youre not really moving, attacking, healing etc., you got lots of time to type messages, thus being abled to coordinate the team, tell them about flanking enemies, adjust slashers and the like. Also - again, personal oppinion - a GOOD shielder would never leave his character just standing there, thinking "I got a royal shield, what is gonna happen to me?!". As soon as your shield breaks, the whole team is likely to be killed which is why you should always have an eye on the situation at hand so you can react.