My opinions:
"If an owner misses a pick and gets skipped, how many other picks should you allow before making a pick for that owner yourself? There's always the dilemma that soon after you post that pick, the owner will show up and want a completely different player."
-- If it's the first round of an untimed draft, and it's been more than 24 hours, I would make a pick for the missing owner before allowing the next owner to pick. I would also immediately start looking for a replacement owner.
-- If it's the first round of a timed draft, I would make a pick at the end of the first round, and immediately start looking for a replacement owner.
-- If it's anytime after the first round, I would not make a pick for the owner at all. If he misses 2 rounds of picks, I would immediately start looking for a replacement owner.

"If you overlook someone on a keeper list and accidentally list a player as available, how do you handle it when that player gets drafted? If it is noticed immediately, it can be easy to resolve. But if the player gets drafted and then several other picks are made before anyone points out the mistake, it can get messy."
The NWP, which I started, had a rule that explicitly dealt with this. If you neglect to list someone on the keeper list, and he is subsequently drafted, you lose the player. No exceptions. The NWP also had a rule that said that only players on the Available list could be drafted. And the Available list was posted several days (sometimes weeks) before the draft started. So every owner had plenty of time to look at the list of Availables to see if anyone they intended to keep was there. I always allowed corrections right up until the draft started. This most often happened when a player was returning from IR. I would say every couple of seasons, someone neglected to roster a player who was returning from IR. Sometimes they noticed their mistake, sometimes they didn't.

"How often do you NEED to update the available players list? Of course frequent updates are best, but at what point would you need to pause a draft in order to catch up? I think if the commish gets more than ~15 picks behind, it starts to be a problem. If the commish can't at least update things after every round, the draft probably should have a delay. Then again, people want to keep a draft moving..."

Available player list should be updated AT LEAST daily. And a good commissioner will post something like "Available player list updated" periodically so that owners know how far back they have to look in the draft to make sure they are not drafting a player who is no longer available.

Again - these are just my opinions. YMMV.

Should long-term faithful owners be given more leeway, or should everyone, including rookie owners, be treated exactly the same?

For instance: I’ve seen scenarios where a 10+ season veteran of a league is delinquent in drafting, and it seems there is a lot more patience with this than when a newbie to the league has the same delay.

"The NWP, which I started, had a rule that explicitly dealt with this. If you neglect to list someone on the keeper list, and he is subsequently drafted, you lose the player. No exceptions. The NWP also had a rule that said that only players on the Available list could be drafted. And the Available list was posted several days (sometimes weeks) before the draft started. So every owner had plenty of time to look at the list of Availables to see if anyone they intended to keep was there. I always allowed corrections right up until the draft started. This most often happened when a player was returning from IR. I would say every couple of seasons, someone neglected to roster a player who was returning from IR. Sometimes they noticed their mistake, sometimes they didn't."

I believe he was asking what a commissioner should do if the commissioner accidentally posts a keeper player as available, and that player is then drafted. Obviously the player belongs to the team who listed him as a keeper, but now the player who drafted him may be screwed if the mistake isn't noticed quickly, because the commissioner screwed up and falsely listed that player as available.

Actually in the NWP the original owner still loses the player. The rule was explicitly written that way so that all owners, not just the commissioner, would review the list of available players.

Since the rule was written that way, I don’t think we ever had an instance where a team lost a player of any value. A scrub maybe, but never a player of value. Owners were generally good about notixing if something looked too good to be true, and woupd point it out.

How about before joining such a draft you have to accept who you really are?

A WIS baseball NERD.

I don't care if you look like Ryan Gosling, or if you have Alex Rodriguez's bank account.

In this small WIS world, we are all the same. I have never looked at another owner thinking, he's taking this way too seriously. So check in a couple times a day. It can take less than 2 minutes.

Ryan Gosling looks sorta' like a tall, skinny Tim Conway.