How are you supposed to "upgrade" when the channel name with UTF-8 means it's a totally different channel than the original. It has nothing to do with the irc network.
You wait and wait until everybody decides to change the channel to a different name? You have two channels and keep asking people to move the another one?
This is just crazy.
Unicode has been around for a very long time. It's time people start using it so everyone has equal access to their channels/networks without having to keep switching between code pages. If channel owners want to change to the UTF8 version of the channel, it really isn't that difficult. They simply move to the new channel, and put a notice in the old telling people to move. Give that a week or so and then kick and 5 min ban everyone still in the old channel with a note to go to the new one. Then, put in place an automatic kick with notice when anyone joins the channel for a week or so and then set the channel to invite only for awhile and then drop it entirely. Almost everyone will have made it to the new channel by then.
Don't like that method? Try another. In any case, changing channels isn't that difficult. I've done it a few times in the past. What it comes down to is whether or not the channel owners care about losing visitors who want to use the newer version of mIRC. If they don't care and want to force people to use older versions, that's up to them. But if they want to keep all of their visitors, they need to change the name to UTF8. They may not like having to, but the channel name is still the same... in fact, the name becomes the same for everyone regardless of code page instead of one thing for one person and something else for another.
