I will need proof of this.

There is code to specifically not kick dead players on arena maps.

I turned off my admin status, went into the server and spawned, and typed explode in the console. After 3 minutes I did not even get a warning message. I did this 2 times.

If you select spectator after you died, then the afk timer will activate of course.
 
I might have found the problem. The afk kicker built into the game was not disabled and it might have been causing issues with the saxton hale plugin.
 
Alright. Glad to hear.
And yes, I can confirm this happened several times to me on the VSH server.

If you select spectator after you died, then the afk timer will activate of course.
Oh... that might be it.
 
Alright. Glad to hear.
And yes, I can confirm this happened several times to me on the VSH server.


Oh... that might be it.

I idled for over 3 minutes (the limit on our custom afk kicker) and then some time after that, the default afk kicker built into the game kicked me without any sort of warning. I have disabled it.

If you select spectate after you die it should still warn you. Unfortunately there is no way to detect if someone is really waiting to play if they put themselves in spectator instead of joining the queue.