I used to host some IRC chat channels long ago, rather controversial ones at that. I had one rule ... nobody, not even me, could have "Ops" status. Ops means having channel operator status and all the kick, ban, and mutilate tools that go along with the title. Meaning nobody could control anyone and tell them what they could and couldn't type or say, not even me. 
You learned real fast how to finesse people with words alone rather than brute force. An interesting exercise for a few years. Then once I learned how to do that, I learned it was just as simple to ban and kick idiots too with Ops tools.
Of course, that approach would leave you vulnerable to being taken over by another group when there was a server split and people went onto the other-side and would create the "new" channel and make themselves ops...
I don't want to know how many hours I wasted as a punk kid on IRC doing channel takeovers or such. Of course, the real fun came with one of the guys in my group somehow managed to get an EFNet server registered - and suddenly we could all be server operators and we could log in and k-line people from the entire network
We didn't do it often, because if you get caught abusing it they will kill off your server... but it was convenient every once in a while
I do appreciate servers that have dedicated channel bots running for you that can't be taken over... they really do simplify the small army of bots you used to have just to protect your channel.
