what happened? why did it start? also who won?

Pretty sure the SAMB won and it didn't turn out so well...

There wasn't much of a winner, people just got tired of fighting and left for most of it. Most IRMBers left after after the last of the three major conflicts.

Ye there was a war but ppl usually just left.

Wait. What conflicts? I didnt know there were 3

There were three (or four? There might have been a fourth, but I don't remember everything from those days) distinct conflicts, but they all happened in a short time span (all within a few months), so for the most part, it's regarded as one long war.

i also heard samurai got banned, but im not sure why...

As far as I remember, Samurai never got banned.

i think i remembered someone else......

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.

what even happened

@Bobcat

Thank you for describing the conflict to others. So much happened in that time that it still hurts to think about, so I'm glad I didn't have to explain.

@Dragon Eyes

How the original conflict started? SA had their own way of things, IR had theirs. Someone who was on SA who visited here didn't like our way of doing things (I think it was something along the lines of thinking we were attacking who they were when we were explaining how our MBs were different in customs, structure, and how our MB community interacts), mentioned it on their MB, and that's how the first conflict started. It never really recovered after that. Stuff we was said on both sides, people got banned, others left, it was a mess.

Hey. It's me greendog888. No this is not my acct. I'm borrowing my friend's phone.so I'm gonna make this quick.

Basically a user from the SAMB named Peari here to spread randomness. The IRMBERS at that time aske her to stop. She went back to the SAMB and complained that we were bein rude. This started the war. The third basically skirmish finished us off.

Sorry I need to go. I'll explain later 

To add to Green Dog's statement, we found out an amazing member of our MB community had died. Her brother showed up to give the news. We decided on having a weekend of silence on here (no posts not related to the MB funeral we were holding or about the MBer in general). It wasn't hard since our MB was quiet to begin with and we all knew each other.

One MBer visited from SA to post some random stuff. Since we knew she probably hadn't heard, we explained what was going on and asked her to respect our wishes. They returned to their MB angry about not being able to post, said some stuff about us, and the conflict started. It got bad and honestly annoying.

It infuriated me (and many IR MBers) how many people who had no interest in our MB before showed up to ask us if the grieving would stop anytime soon so that they could post random stuff on here (I'm not joking, people actually said that) even though they didn't even care about our MB and would leave the moment the conflict was over.

Stuff was said on both sides. Eventually it calmed down and both sides apologized, but stuff between IR and SA was never the same after that. More conflicts followed and then most of us left.

If you want to get into details, the Randomness War was technically the third IR-SA War. The first I no longer remember, but the second one had  with a short while after a bunch of people immigrated from SA. Plat (he used to be popular in the SA, if I'm not wrong one of TAP) tried to stop us, but we actually got upset at hhim, which was quite childish. Another conflict that arose before the Randomness War was very close to the launch of Book 8, but the fighting ceased a couple days before.