Sometimes, when a user is suspended from a site, they take their issues into chat. This can be good, if the user is honestly open-minded and committed to changing whatever behavior earned them the suspension. But, it can also just be an extension of that inappropriate behavior. In either case, it is at the very least not something that really needs to be seen or dealt with by the general populace of the site from which the user was suspended, and at worst can be rather irritating and disruptive. In some extreme cases of the latter, it could also turn off newcomers to chat from ever participating in chat or the main site - or perhaps even from any StackExchange site.
For these reasons, I'm suggesting here that site suspensions should also apply to chat. However, the scope should be limited so that it's not unnecessarily broad and still allows the user to communicate with essential individuals.
This breaks down into a few components.
- Users should not be able to chat in general-access rooms which are associated with the site on which they are suspended.
- Users should be able to chat in rooms associated with sites where their account is currently in good standing.
Users should be able to have chat discussions with moderators of the site on which they are suspended, in dedicated rooms.
For example, let's say a user is suspended on ServerFault but has an account currently in good standing on IT Security.
- They should not be able to chat in The Comms Room.
- They should be able to chat in The DMZ.
They should be able to chat with ServerFault moderators, in a room specifically created (optionally by the user, or by site moderators) for this purpose.
For the last part I suggest the user be provided (either as part of the on-site notification of suspension or upon entry into a chat room where their suspension is in effect) with an option to create a chat room to which site moderators will automatically be invited. This room should be the only room, associated to the site from which they are suspended, to which the suspended user has access. This way, they still have a simple means of communicating with the moderators (hopefully, to work things out for the better) while not being able to interfere with or further aggravate the other site members.
I understand that, given the shared nature of our current SE chat system, this may be a difficult feature to implement in the very near future. However, I would still like to see it considered.
EDIT: Struck out suggestion for the option of allowing suspended users to create chat rooms with moderators, as there is apparently already a mechanism for the suspended users to contact moderators and that particular aspect of this feature request seems unpopular in the comment thread.