How does booting and AET work?

I've been playing for a while, and I still don't get how booting and AET work. Is booting just supposed to be a period after which you auto-win and AET a period of time after which the turn is ended? If so I don't really get the purpose of setting Boot to 4 days and AET to 6 on league games, because AET will never come into play.

Also I have this game that I've been playing on for a while. The opponent has not made a move in more than 2 weeks and has yet to be booted. Is this the way the system is supposed to be working?
http://awbw.amarriner.com/game.php?games_id=220801

The boot/AET system is more or less how you described, but there are a couple of key things that come into play and reconcile some of the discrepancies you're seeing.

Generally speaking, AET is a countdown until your turn is automatically ended. If you don't take your turn before the timer runs out, you're skipped, but you stay in the game. Boot is a countdown until you're kicked from the game for not taking your turn fast enough.

The catch is that your boot limit can be reset with activity. In other words, with a boot limit of 10, when it gets down to 1 or 0 you can save yourself from being booted by moving even a single unit. Any completed action (capturing, attacking, moving, supplying, diving, building etc.) counts as activity to reset this counter. The same is not true for AET. In other words, if you had a boot of 4 and AET of 6, after 3 days your counts would be 1 and 3. Make a move and then leave the game again and your counts would go to 4 and 3, meaning AET would run out first. The AET is basically a backup to ensure you don't take too much advantage of the boot reset.

Now, the next problem is that the AET system doesn't actually work. At least, I haven't seen it actually end anybody's turn in ages (if ever). I'm not certain, but I believe the boot limit should only be able to be reset once per turn, though I think I've seen it work multiple times.

Another thing to consider is vacation- when someone sets vacation, it saves them from being booted until the next time they log in. I'm not sure what the time limit is, but after a while it doesn't cut it anymore and you will get booted, but it should give you at least a week of extended boot. I can't remember for certain, but in some cases (I think with vacation) it will let your boot limit go negative until you log back in (even if the vacation leeway has expired) and then basically boot you immediately.

Final thing to consider is the problems with the site recently. I don't know what impact the site being down has on boot/AET countdown, but I don't believe you can get booted while it's down.

Anyone with clarifications on any of these points can feel free to chime in, but this is my general understanding from little more than playing on the site over the years.

Im gonna check whether the mechanics of boot and aet are not discussed on the wiki, or perhaps on the old wiki . There may be odd details we dont want to forget and need transfering.  These basic site function mechanics (rules) really need to be readily available for new players and for reference.  

With AET (automatic end turn) your turn finishes and the game continues, but you may have lost important opportunities to move units, to attack and buy new units.  With boot you are plain out (and have lost in 1v1, but in multi or team the others play on).  The aet hasnt worked at all for ages. The boot works. However the vacation function is sometimes tricky,  see below.AET also allowed a player to move or leave units in a solid formation and think about possible fine adjustments without any fear of losing on time. In blocked positions can be useful .  Also with aet, in an interesting game your opponent if he wishes the game to continue without taking advantage of you missing a turn, he can also skip his turn, or just spend half of his money without moving units significantly and this allows game to continue on a reasonable balance.

Vacation function is difficult to precicely predict and coming back off holiday you may need to prepare your whole days play on all maps before doing anything because it s unclear when youll get booted, maybe within hours or one real day. I had many dissapointing boots from this. Nowadays I just dont bother with vacation function and use mobile devices but that has dangers as clicking can easily go astray doing such.  After site down periods there is normally some days of real time to play before boots even if it says negative and i never had problems then though it is scarry or stressful if you have a hard ongoing battle and youre woried about getting booted.

Boot works on time mostly and can be reset many times. Boot can sometimes be a bummer especially when you play many days quickly then have a long weekend drinking or whatever and have a horrid surprise coming back with enthusiasm to see your most interesting game is over.  There are possible modifications for boot system discussed around awbw such as a time control as in chess which could give more flexibility for players or organisers with possibility of increments or fixed total time.   In friendly games at least we could do with a way of undoing a boot and continuing the game.

Future Hopefully at some point we can get marriner to let us fix bugs, repair the site, and modernise. Or perhaps stuff will be implemented elsewhere to try ... such as the custom wars project.  In the meantime we enjoy what we have!  ... i have a global league game at - 40 aet -10 boot +vac ... against the current top player! he he