Character squatting/camping: it makes a game look way more active than it really is, and robs others of RP opportunities when those people aren't removed from the characters--either because staff is not willing or refuses to, or players (like has been said earlier in the thread) find ways to cheat the system. I think the solution is while you can't really change players tendencies or behaviors you can change your policies. That said, even if you do, players will pitch fits and cause a lot of trouble if people bump them off of characters they were squatting on, as I've run into personally on a game I play on.
On the game in question a staffer wanted to free up characters that had been squatted on for literal months, like 16+ weeks. They went to the rest of staff and were basically told "It would cause too much trouble, let people request said characters if they want them and the person is idle" so they encouraged folks to request those characters. Of course the problem here is the people who get bumped off said characters /are/ going to find out about it, and then can totally proceed to start trouble for the person who's assumed the alt. Imagine being a new person on a game and getting bitched out because you took up the character that so-and-so only logged in once a month to page chat with another player on that game. Never actually scene.
So basically either staff has to make that call, but what I've been hearing so far in this thread is we can't count on staff to actually take responsibility for such. I've seen a few different wizcores just stop idlebooting/nuking people for just lack of activity so far, or need to do so, at that, it's kind of a depressing trend.