MoonGamers Idle Kicking Policy
So there has again been some recent speculation and misinformation about our idle kicking policy. Let's get that cleared up now. 
MoonGamers kicks idlers at 10-15 minutes, depending upon the idler and the situation. We believe our dedicated players need time to get a beer, hit the loo, kiss the wife and pet the dog, so we allow time for our players to walk away for a short bit to take care of things.
Chronic idlers are given less time and are usually warned/kicked around 5-10 minutes.
We check idlers to make sure they are not being used as a 2nd computer in game to cheat. When found, they are kicked immediately and repeatedly.
There are exceptions to idle kicking. We view idle kicking as a tool to help manage lopsided teams, and will often leave an idler in on the strong team in order to help the weaker team, and keep the competitive spirit in the game.
We will also leave idlers alone if the team skill is even, and if there is an idler on each side. Again, this is a tool for admins to manage the server if and when teams become stacked or lopsided, and the idler(s) will be kicked if/when necessary for a more balanced playing experience. And, there are other admin-related reasons for leaving idlers in when necessary that I won't go into here in the general forum.
We have an idle timer program that is based solely on kills and deaths, and is not affected by player movement. The program does not automatically kick the idlers, as we feel automating this process would result in more lopsided, stacked teams. It simply provides us with the amount of time that a player has been idle. Also, having the timer based on kills and deaths, a player can leave a book on a mouse but that will have no effect on the idle timer, as it is not based on movement.
History
MoonGamers has a lot of history, which comes with being one of the oldest BF1942 communities out there still alive and kicking. We were one of the first servers to kick idlers. Back then, it was a harder process and meant quite a bit of admin time for writing down, tracking, and manually timing the players, but we did this in order to kick any idle player to make room on the server, as we were full 24/7/365. Also back in the day, we would leave idlers in for dedicated players who would meet us in TeamSpeak, and then we would coordinate kicking the idler to let that regular player into the server.
Then one of our brilliant coders created our idle timer for BF1942, and we have been using it ever since. As the game changed, our reasons for kicking idlers also changed with it. We would still kick to make room for another player, but as the game got older and servers started having more empty slots, we started kicking idlers with the intent of balancing team skill, which is where we are today.
MoonGamers was involved with the BF2 server manager coding team, and we specifically requested that they build an idle timer into the BF2CC, which was the admin interface for BF2.
If you have any questions about our idle kicking policy, please feel free to ask here.
