I started on IRC circa ... 1990? My older handles are still in the most ancient of helpfiles. Drama is practically built into the protocol.
First, last I saw, servers connected in a tree structure, so a "split" further down the tree structure, closest to the trunk, might take out quite a lot of users. Therefore, administrators closer to that trunk effectively control a larger population -- unless the admins of IRC servers toward the "leaves" connect with someone else.
Second, and again I am working from old memories, there were a lot of synchronization issues, so timing attacks were quite common. Join at just the right moment, and you could take over a channel. That has probably stopped.
Third, bandwidth usage can be intense as you approach the root, so most admins were originally piggybacking off of .edu connections. "My bandwidth, my rules."
Fourth, the protocol has evolved in many, many different ways. Originally, bans didn't even exist, you just had to hope that if you kicked someone, they stayed gone -- forkbots took amusing advantage of this. So, too, did the server code evolve, as well as the code for numerous clients, which were often vulnerable to buffer overflows.
Fifth, claim that name. NickServ had a period of not existing, so if someone wanted your nickname, flooding you off the net was an option. Whoever can DOS the most wins. Similarly, channel names were hotly contested, so combined with various attacks, you could "take over" a channel and depose people if ChanServ didn't exist -- and they didn't have bots busy re-opping them.
Pulling back, you see people from server admins down to channel owners and then half-ops, each appointed by those above, scrambling for bandwidth, knowledge, and names. It's nearly designed for drama.
First, last I saw, servers connected in a tree structure, so a "split" further down the tree structure, closest to the trunk, might take out quite a lot of users. Therefore, administrators closer to that trunk effectively control a larger population -- unless the admins of IRC servers toward the "leaves" connect with someone else.
Second, and again I am working from old memories, there were a lot of synchronization issues, so timing attacks were quite common. Join at just the right moment, and you could take over a channel. That has probably stopped.
Third, bandwidth usage can be intense as you approach the root, so most admins were originally piggybacking off of .edu connections. "My bandwidth, my rules."
Fourth, the protocol has evolved in many, many different ways. Originally, bans didn't even exist, you just had to hope that if you kicked someone, they stayed gone -- forkbots took amusing advantage of this. So, too, did the server code evolve, as well as the code for numerous clients, which were often vulnerable to buffer overflows.
Fifth, claim that name. NickServ had a period of not existing, so if someone wanted your nickname, flooding you off the net was an option. Whoever can DOS the most wins. Similarly, channel names were hotly contested, so combined with various attacks, you could "take over" a channel and depose people if ChanServ didn't exist -- and they didn't have bots busy re-opping them.
Pulling back, you see people from server admins down to channel owners and then half-ops, each appointed by those above, scrambling for bandwidth, knowledge, and names. It's nearly designed for drama.
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