The bug
If you set the idle timeout to one minut by using /setidletimeout, and a player is riding a boat, they will be kicked after one minute. Riding/controlling a boat is considered as being idle.
Comments 5
This issue is still persistent. It unfortunately makes the feature useless on SMP, since oceans are (literally) a big part of the world, as is sailing over them. I suspect if one were riding in a mine cart, they'd have the same problem.
Is this still a concern in the current Minecraft version 1.8.1 Prerelease 3 / Launcher version 1.5.3 or later? If so, please update the affected versions in order to best aid Mojang ensuring bugs are still valid in the latest releases/pre-releases.
Confirmed.
Steering the boat with the mouse doesn't count as activity.