I've been looking for an opportunity to tell the story of Lady Checkmate, easily the evillest, nastiest piece of subhuman garbage ever. So here it is.
My local newspaper in its online version has a commenting area for local news stories. The comment area isn't part of the newspaper itself but provided by Disqus, a separate entity. My first encounter with it was...at least five years ago. I only knew of it as a "third party" forum you could add to your site, but didn't know that there was a whole world of topics and discussions you could go to on disqus.com as well. Much like Yahoo Answers, except that on Disqus you can set up your own channel and moderate it.
I'm not sure when they began the "anyone can create a channel and run and moderate it" model, it was well over a year ago, and they've since stopped allowing it because it brings with it its own problems. Prior to that, Lady Checkmate had earned a reputation as a whiny, irritating bitch with a major persecution complex. She was roundly despised by nearly all the moderators on Disqus for the way she conducted herself and was kind of dismissed as the resident whackjob.
Then it came time for her to set up her own channel where she could run things as she pleased. And so began the infamous "Faith & Religion" channel on Disqus.
To the casual observer on Disqus, it appears that Faith & Religion is one of the more popular areas to discuss religion - it has over 70,000 subscribers. But if you peek in on the channel itself it seems that the only people talking are a handful. So what gives? Well, to say that Lady Checkmate runs a tight ship is the understatement of the year. She is notorious for banning people for anything she perceives to be an infraction of her absurdly rigid rules...and even when people DON'T break them. She will ban you for simply disagreeing with her or taking anything she considers to be an anti-Christian stance. And it doesn't stop there. Most of the people she's banned have been Christians but not of HER brand (she's a Seventh Day Adventist). If you are a Disqus member and haven't tried out her channel, I invite you to see how long you last over there.
The absolute worst thing about her though is that her "channel rules" which she points people to repeatedly are a joke. She doesn't even follow the rules herself. If she doesn't like what you posted, you are often just banned, deleted, removed with no warning. It will appear as though you were never there at all. She also runs a "mediation" channel where people who've been banned from her place can go to appeal to be reinstated. It's a joke too because she's queen of the castle there too and she'll either delete outright the appeal message or simply deny it.
There are crazy and overzealous moderators all over the place at Disqus but the powers that be over there have decreed that the moderator is always right and there is no going over their heads. So ultimately Lady C is free to run her channel as she likes. Everyone knows about her though, and she's frequently the topic of discussion when it comes to nutty moderators. That's always burned my ass personally because she has set up a channel called "Faith & Religion" which sounds like a broad enough topic of discussion that anyone can take part, and you think with over 70,000 people it must be a good place to chat. She should have called her channel "Extreme right-wing Christian fundamentalists Only" because that's closer to what's going on.
I make a hobby of annoying her. Since once she bans you that's it, I'll often create new accounts and post on her channel at 3 in the morning, posts that take her to task for her fascist attitude. Then at least I know my posts will have a few hours of visibility before her imperial hand can wipe them away.
As for the content on "Faith & Religion" itself...well. I don't know why it never occurred to me before, but I will begin to submit her over-the-top craziness in regular submissions here.
