Sometimes, something happens which can help people to remember to curb the afks . . .
One day, while running an alt 10-man Naxx (some time ago), we had a shaman go afk for a good 40 minutes. After waiting for a while, we finally just decided to go ahead and start clearing Spider Wing trash. We ended up killing the first boss before the player finally came back to his keyboard.
When we asked him what took him so long, he said, "I was making a smoothie!"
It became part of guild culture. Whenever someone went afk, people would start hollering, "Smoothie time!" Whenever this shaman went afk, he would have to defend himself against accusations that he was making more smoothies. (He started stating at the beginning of raid that he already had his smoothie beside him, so we didn't have to worry about him leaving the computer.) It was something to laugh about, but more than that, it was something which reminded people in a funny way that it wasn't cool to just go afk and disappear.
Even today, there are still cracks about that smoothie.
