That's for network-level drama, sure, but in my experience most of the day-to-day drama was at the channel level and anybody can start a new channel.
And back in its heydays there were enough big IRC networks that you could just hop from one to the other if the admins became a nuisance. Then you had an eggdrop bot synchronize both channels during the migration, good times.
I left IRC almost a decade ago. Channels moving servers honestly, rarely happened in my day. The networks were all pretty much set up. You may get smaller communities changing from smaller networks but that was it and that was generally a friendly affair if it wasn't the channel was forced closed by the network admins.
Most of the channels moving have never moved before. And those that did, did 10-20 years ago. It is a rare event.
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.
IRC seems like drama central. I can’t say I understand the detail of this takeover and split. But the tone of all the messages are very dramatic.
Why is that? Is it something inherent in the aggregated community of mods, channels and servers? Some communities seem ripe for drama and I have no idea why.
I've been away from IRC drama for so long. The idea of people fighting over IRC channels, trying to strongarm maintain ownership of them is just so cringeworthy now (nuking channels that advertise an alternative network, holy hell). Sad little king of a sad little hill.
while elsewhere i asked the same question, this is of course the downside of a large network. on a large network such issues disappear in the noise, and people would have to make a very very good case to have the channel owners dethroned. on a small network such issues can be dealt with easier (although given the reason for leaving, and other comments about irc.perl.org it appears that that place was no better)
though there is still the option of creating a new channel with a different name, and inviting people over...
I'm in the other camp on this one. I think the best thing to happen to IRC were the services that let you keep your nick or your channel without needing to maintain an army of bots. Channel takeovers on EFnet were a fact of life and it made things pretty unpleasant imo.
Petty flamewars and off-topic discussion (e.g. the channel regulars chit-chatting about their hobbies or personal lives, 4Chan-like memes, etc.) are why some Freenode communities decided to set up a new channel with a double ##- prefix to be strictly on-topic, while they let the old channel just go to hell.
This whole drama. Sudden mass resignation of volunteer stuff, corporate interest assuming direct control. We'd likely leave Freenode immediately, and... most likely migrate to one of SaaS chats. A lot of people in the community didn't like IRC and wanted to use something more mainstream. I was one of those arguing for staying on IRC, and the argument was much easier when status quo was a Freenode channel.
I suspect quite a lot of IRC communities exist only because staying is easier than switching, and if you disrupt their channel, they'll end up fracturing and migrating to Discord or Telegram or some other corporate network.
I remember back in the days of IRC being megapopular, a lot of servers would kick me out because they had too many channels and listing them triggered flood protection :-P
Interesting post. This is exactly the same kind of thing that happens on smaller IRC networks. Power groups come and go. Sometimes servers (with their own regular users) join the network and stay for a few months. Political compromises are made (you can enforce your crazy rule if you bring X number of users). Fascinating to watch, but a colossal time drain.
The thing is, my experience is different, but of course similarly anecdotal. I essentially got my entire professional network and career on IRC, and that includes contacts all over the modern tech stack and adjacent interests, being on just two IRC "servers". And I could connect many other people in the same way.
On Discord, there seem to be just more barriers against this. Getting someone into a new place doesn't just require hopping into a new channel with a single /join command, but an entire new "server" with a new crowd. There's more inhibition against that.
And back in its heydays there were enough big IRC networks that you could just hop from one to the other if the admins became a nuisance. Then you had an eggdrop bot synchronize both channels during the migration, good times.
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