Encyclopedia Dramatica
In the beggining, AnonOps pioneered popularizing the anonymous culture to wider audience, or, at least webchat IRC. This heartly welcome for newfaggery buttrape led to the inevitable corruption of morals, and even the granted right to just idle in a silent channel for days.
As the tradition with IRC goes, network opers and chanops grew increasingly incompetent and while claiming to be anonymous leaders (wat?) becoming lucrative lulzcow in itself. It was impossible for the staff to tell the difference between a troll and someone who genuinely disagreed, and wanted a voice. Eventually, they just banned everyone who didn't DDoS or research Aaron Barr's stolen documents. This led them to be accused of acting as a honeypot for the mentally retarded. Barrett Brown then demanded that all potential Anons report to him for approval, and refused those who simply wanted to be "lowercase anonymous."
Sometime in May of 2011 the newbie crapflood inexplicably exploded and rogue opers dissatisfied with the situation (and nickserv abuse) decided to eradicate the network. Packets were thrown both ways (even ED IRC), sites were rmed, DNS hijacked, conversations and passwords were sniffed and leaked, cloaked hosts disclosed. Simply the usual IRC teenage drama, too unfunny to describe. Thank you Ryan!
After all this, Anonops' security has taken a lot of damage and will take a while to patch up, setting them back a long way (although the site was only off for twelve hours or so, lol DDoS). It has also become apparent that this was a petty feud that escalated, making everyone suffer needlessly because both parties involved in the argument - including all the sysops from both sides - were dickheads who acting too short-sightedly to realise that they were needlesly ruining something decent and nearly screwed something else wonderful over too, and that this sort of bullshit should never happen again.