Ha ha, first post. Talk about lame ;-)
Anyway, I see I'm missing a possible option but what the heck. Our network runs the unstable 1.7.x version and we only upgrade whenever a new version has been released. But naturally there are exceptions to this rule.. Last year or so I also implemented a few SVN snapshots simply because I faced a few bugs and really wanted them gone.
Fortunatly for me the developers (I believe it was GeniusDex) wrote a quick patch so that I could first update the version I was running, but because I didn't feel like adding the patching to our "disaster recovery scheme" (=instructions how to wipe out / re-install the virtual zone on which Anope is running and instructions how to setup both Anope & Unreal automated) I basicly changed that temporarily to "grab the latest SVN snapshot".
But in th overal we're using regular releases.