A merge request usually results from someone trying to edit or re-word a question into the wording of a question that already exists.

For instance, if I had the question "What is a fxo?" and I reworded it to "What is a fox," that correctly-spelled question already exists on our site. When this happens, then different things might happen, depending on your permissions on the site:

• People with the power to merge would get a button asking them if they want to merge the questions together, and if they clicked it, it would happen.
• People withOUT the power to merge would get a button asking them if they want to merge the questions together, and if they clicked it, it would send a request to the supervisors, where they could double-check the request and either approve or deny it.

This depends on the branch of IT you're referring to. Here are a few examples for you, though:

• Network Administrators: Emergencies could include a gateway or network segment going down and OSPF not kicking in, resulting in lack of connectivity for users instead of packets being re-routed as needed, or mis-configuring a router or firewall remotely and being unable to get back in (shouldn't happen on today's appliances; there are ways around this).
• Security Admins: Emergencies include finding intruders on your network, confidential documents being forwarded outside of the company to unauthorized personnel, or other suspicious activity (ports opened where they shouldn't be, etc).
• Server Administrators: Viruses on servers, RAID controllers failing, HVAC systems failing to keep the servers cool, running out of disk space on servers or SANs.
• PBX Administrators: Voice T1 lines going down without a backup PRI, FXO/FXS Gateways failing, voicemail systems failing or running out of space.
• DB Admins: Database corruption, lack of failover in an Active/Passive cluster, running out of space on server or SAN.

As you can probably guess, there are many more--too many to list, but hopefully this will give you an idea.

I hope this helps!

Take care,

Rob Kendrick