Nobody really won. Both sides lost; it was nothing to be proud of.
At this point, a few years in hindsight, it's become more gold plated than it actually was. It's sort of hard to explain, but SAMBers tend to be really interested in the IR-SA War when they learn about it for the first time. I can see why, it's sort of a taboo topic for those of us who actually experienced it, which in itself gives it intrigue. The details are vauge, but you still know that there are posts and posts of content on it. Everyone skirts around the topic, because as I said, it's still sore, but that makes you even more curious. However, if you really get into it, it was just a war like the ones we get on the SAMB every now and again. You're (@Fanifer) moderately new still, so I don't think you've experienced a full blown "war" yet (and hopefully you won't have to), but this one was particularly nasty, even for a group that was used to bad disagreements.
The IRMB and the SAMB both messed up, although the SAMB started it and kept the whole issue alive. The IRMBers were just holding their ground, but we kept pushing it. It could have been handled better, yes, but we were in the wrong. You'll hear Samurai's name connected to this a lot, and that's because she was involved. She wasn't banned, but she was pretty unpopular on here for a while. It's important to remember that she's grown up a lot since then. Having known her then, and being very close to her now on other websites, that Samurai is nothing like the current one. Both of them can get riled up very easily, and it's worse if they feels offended. I've never really talked to her directly about it, but I think she was defending her base rights as a MBer in her mind. However, she always feels awful about getting angry after the fact. She felt so bad in this case that she tried to stick around so she could repair some of the damage. She was here for a while.
I was certainly not a key participant in the whole ordeal, but I remember parts of it and the aftermath. If it comes down to accuracy though, listen to one of the older IRMBers. They know what they're talking about.
Hope this cleared some things up.
Oh heck I need to do my homework. Whoops.