Nightmare Merges

braindigitalis · Idler Joined: 22 Sep 2003 Posts: 443 Location: IRC

Have you ever had a bad or good experience with a network merge? Have you ever even done a network merge at all?

Do they work? Do they bring down both networks in a blaze of arguments? Recount your experiences here Smile

Fireman1061 · Newbie Joined: 09 Dec 2003 Posts: 59 Location: In Hell

Mergers do work some of the time, but most of the mergers I’ve been though the person u merging into has wanted u to merger right now and u don’t thoroughly discuss all the aspects of the merger.
Mergers need to be discussing in great detail before they happen, that means including all of the staff of both networks in the merger talks.
Things that should be discussed are things like, how to handle oper-abuse, who will host services, what is the benefit of the merger, and a lot of other minute details that if u don’t talk about it, it may come back to bight u in the butt.

Willaim · Lurker Joined: 27 Jun 2003 Posts: 242 Location: IRC

Yea, mergers don't work for me. Especially since everyone who merges with a net I admin doesn't like me too well.. Wink

Ashen · Idler Joined: 05 Jan 2004 Posts: 285

I once tried to merge with the network BuzzPot (back when my net was called moonlightglade, see : http://searchirc.com/network/Moonlightglade

Unfortunately, the staff at the network I merged with thought differently to me on some key issues, and fundamentally, we rushed into the merger too quickly, without realising that our networks were on too different topics to merge sucessfully.

One of the head admins of the other network started doing lame things like modehacking in channels for no good reason, and I took the servers that supported me and delinked from them.

After this, I gathered together several servers on the same topic as my server (topic being 'servers which exist to host the channels of free shells providers'), I talked with their admins, and picked the mature, stable, clueful ones.

We then incorperated into a larger network. This network has been doing remarkably well - http://searchirc.com/network/Shellsnet - and we continue to grow.

My opinion on mergers is they can be a great thing, in fact, they are the primary way my baby network has grown up. The problem is, it is hard to find the right partners for a merger - and often it will be an uphill struggle to merge the two networks sucessfully.
I wrote the Network Setup Guide for searchirc's IRC-AG (Admins Guild) and followed that when merging, and have got a rather good (imo) network out of it. There are tricks to it though, like only merging with networks which have the same theme as you, whose staff agree with you, and who are prepared to work together.

Once, we had a situation where I was in talks about a network merger with an estonian network.... and one of their admins had such huge ego, and such little maturity, that despite the fact he was their hub admin, services admin, and general boss, the other admins did not like him and the server that hosted 90% of their users left their network to join mine.
The lesson I learned from this is that the clueful people should be the head admins, and sometimes, you have to realise that you are not that person and should step down. I've had a lot of friction at first with my new network as, since it's a free shell provider network, many of the 'users' there are in fact shell server admins who are highly clueful, but come from many different backgrounds. The result of this is that I've had to really practice holding my own in issues which I know about and letting other people handle issues, even important ones, where they know more then me. This, imho, is the essence of teamwork which makes a good network rise about the rest, and what makes a merger good for a network, rather then just good for usercount. Ironically enough, I started out wanting to increase my usercount, and ended up realising that higher usercount often reduces network quality.

-Ashen

EqualSlashed_Brian · Lurker Joined: 29 Aug 2004 Posts: 222 Location: IRC

I merged with two networks for like 5 seconds and another one for like 2 days. First time turns out the admins didn't even agree on it. Second time the person that paid the bills turned out to be a total power hungry prick.Now I don't even bother with links anymore at all.

RenegadeIRC · none Joined: 29 Oct 2004 Posts: 11

UNLESS you know the person before linking and how they act and etc., it's not gonna work.

WhaLberg · Posted: Apr 23, 2005 3:56am Post subject:

Never merged.

Bleeder · none Joined: 05 Oct 2004 Posts: 1

Never merged either. I dont have a network :'(

ShelLuser · none Joined: 08 Apr 2005 Posts: 21

Merged & succeeded.

Is it a fair answer? Technically speaking I think it is, but when you look at the state our nets were in then I guess its a little cheating Wink

Back than we had 2 networks, each with a very low userbase and also running different IRCd's. Apart from that one network had done a little in setting up policies and the likes, the other was solely good fun.

Things worked out just fine, but I really wouldn't want to think about merging with another network right now. Unless you're both very serious and know each network well and both parties are willing to compromise...

Ofcourse there is another factor which is IMO perhaps even more important. What about the userbase ?

If you have a network A with channel #chan which has 50 users, a solid history, network rules, etc. and the same channel on network B with almost the same situation it could be a little difficult to mix these two up without pissing off at least some users. And what results will that bring you ?

Sometimes users are using a "all or nothing" approach, at least thats my observation. I've seen people who really did not wish to bother with 2+ IRC servers so they just moved their entire channel over and never looked back. After doing a merge you really don't wish for things like that to happen I think. What good is a merge if you also lose a lot of your userbase?

After all; isn't IRC solely for the interest of your users ?

TheWingedOne · Newbie Joined: 03 Apr 2005 Posts: 71 Location: The Void...

Three failed mergers and one successful one. Most of the time the problems we encountered with people who didn't do the work, the person at the top needs to be active.

(On one occasion, our central DNS pool wasn't updated over a 3 month period, had 3 dead server IPs in it and one that was correct. We then delinked after a further month).

Another time we had a moron delink for no good reason, then gline us when we attempted to talk about the issue, ignore repeated emails, etc.

The third guy was never online. Go figure. Stuff didn't get done, we left.

Michael · none Joined: 18 May 2003 Posts: 48

I've been through three mergers, all of the mergers containing three of more servers.

On the first merger (which was the bigger, a merger between three separate networks), it went well for quite a while. However, on one of the merged networks, a staff member was introduced who most of the staff didn't get along with. Some tensions arose, and said staff member did something that created quite the rift (forget exactly what now). Anyone, that network ended up delinking. However, the other network stayed, and it's been smooth sailing ever since.

Cobi · Lurker Joined: 30 Dec 2003 Posts: 121 Location: IRC

I linked once, the netadmin required that he setup the ircd himself, he controled everything that went into the config, and he gave my other server admins global ircop status, so after a day, i squit my server, and started up my old ircd (i was smart and backed it up before letting him touch anything).

SATAN-HHH · Eleet Joined: 29 Nov 2003 Posts: 855 Location: Texas

I've been through one merger. Someone i "thought" i knew, and had known for over a year. They didn't do very well, letting anyone basically have o-lines and causing mass confusion and chaos. I delinked about 3 or 4 days in. Never tried another since, not sure if i want to.

Arie · none Joined: 18 Mar 2005 Posts: 6

I linked once, and they glined *@* -_-

shamrock · none Joined: 24 May 2004 Posts: 25

I formed a network out of a stand alone servers. Seemed to be working really well and an AUP was implemented so that there was no CEO veto. Only server admin's could call a vote and global staff were eligible to vote on network issues. True democracy to my way of thinking. Unfortunately, one server added a local Oper who some did not like and instead of calling a vote, two of the server admins delinked. Their thinking was that since I was the network admin, I should have juped the server! Go figure.

A little off topic, but I prefer a loose network of servers with minimal services, if any, with mature admins and opers who are most concerned about chatting and running their channels and servers without politics. Are there any others out there?

Regards,

shamrock