Suspension from one chat has suspended me from this chat. How can that be?

Question

First, I was suspended for a year from the X site. And I have appealed it.

Then, (several days later) I was having a discussion with a moderator in the French chat, which I thought was in depth and going along fine in terms of questions I have, and boom, someone, a mod, suspended me without warning just as we were talking! [re editing: there was nothing untoward in my sentence. The whole point of this post is explained here. Please do not edit it. I had no way of knowing who suspended me. I did not know it was possible for another mod to suspend me while I was talking to a different mod.]

Now, I tried to access the chat here on ELU, and it says I cannot as I have been suspended from chat. Is this a bug or what?

(By the way, please don't use jargon-y language here. I won't understand it. Thanks.)

For the information of any French forum users: This question is about being suspended from chatting while speaking to a moderator on the French site. This could have happened anywhere as I am told this is a site-wide suspension. I was merely explaining what happened.

I repeat: Since chat suspensions are site-wide, there is no way to know who initiated the suspension or where, ergo, one can ask about this anywhere. And FLE participants should stop maligning me for asking a simple question. I am not blaming the mod with whom I was having the discussion when another mod did this. It was just shocking to me that another mod would do that when a person (me) was talking to a mod. And no one has yet addressed this issue specifically.

Please note once again: This is not about the site where this happened. This is a general question so I would appreciate it if those who keep ascribing intentions to me would just stop it.

Answer 1

Chat suspensions are server wide. If you have a chat suspension on chat.stackexchange.com it covers all the rooms on the server, regardless of what site the room is associated/parented with. There's no option to suspend someone 'only' on a specific site's chatroom or a specific chatroom

he suspended me without warning just as we were talking!

Well not necessarily. Chat flags go to any moderator on the chat for moderator attention flags, and some flags go to 10k users. It could be any moderator, and it seems unlikely that a moderator just decided to suspend you mid conversation without warning.

Basically its likely to be any other moderator active at the time.

That said, considering the circumstances - and looking at the situation, complaining about a suspension on the chat of the site you were suspended while your suspension is in review feels ... potentially problematic, it might have been wise to wait for the review to complete.

Answer 2

I'm a diamond moderator from another site, the only reason I'm responding is because I saw this post in the live feed of posts I was watching and decided to respond. (I have no knowledge of why or who suspended you in chat, and have no insights into what happened there, I'm just responding to your post is all)

The Chat system for all StackExchange sites (except for Meta SE and StackOverflow) is all interlinked. That is, if you receive a chat suspension on French language chat, that chat suspension applies across all of chat.stackexchange.com, which means it applies to the ELU chat page as well.

This is not a bug, this is by-design and has been that way since the Dawn of the chat.

There's no way to ID who suspended you or why, any diamond moderator on one of the Stack Exchange sites has the ability to squash you in chat across chat.stackexchange.com.

It's also not a good idea to whine/complain about a site suspension and/or chat ban when it's under review, so that's probably something to consider - your behavior "looks bad" when you do this, and it likely will affect the review of your chat ban/suspension if one's underway.

Note that this has nothing to do with English Language and Usage, though, so you probably posted this in the wrong meta/site.

Answer 3

I've actually been in a similar situation to you, many years ago. The relation between main sites and chat, especially in regard to suspensions, can be frustrating sometimes. So I sympathise with your situation. Let me try to explain so that you have a clearer understanding of what's going on.

A few things to understand about the nature of chat suspensions, as far as system technicalities go:

• Chat suspensions cannot be done per-room or per-site. You can be temporarily kicked from a single room, but only for a maximum of 30 minutes. Chat suspensions apply to the entire chat.SE server.
• A main-site suspension on X.stackexchange.com will lead to a chat suspension iff that site is your "chat parent" (you can set your "parent site" to be any main site where you have an account). Otherwise, main-site suspensions and chat suspensions are largely independent.
• Chat suspensions can also be applied manually by moderators. Any moderator on any SE site has moderator powers in chat, and many in fact exercise those powers in chatrooms other than those of their mod site.
• (If you're already suspended on chat, changing your parent site won't lift the suspension. It's possible for a moderator to sneakily suspend you by changing your parent site to the site where you're suspended and refreshing your chat profile so that the suspension propagates to chat, but I consider this inappropriate.)

Another important thing, which is NOT in-built to the system, is that you're generally discouraged from using the chatrooms of X.stackexchange.com while suspended on that site. As this rule is not system-enforced, users who are suspended on one site may be expected to keep out of that site's chatrooms (they may keep using the chatrooms of sites they're not suspended on) or risk losing their access to all of chat. As chat is moderated by 600-odd moderators from the entire SE network with widely varying moderation styles, this rule is very inconsistently enforced.

So, how does all of this apply to your case?

• Your chat suspension was applied manually by a moderator, specifically for chat and not associated with your French.SE suspension.
• As you may have surmised from the response to this meta post, a number of moderators from across the network are at least vaguely aware of you in chat. It would be unwise to assume you know who suspended you. (It wasn't me, by the way. We've never met, and I don't know what you did to get suspended. I just saw this meta post and thought I could help.)
• It can be dangerous to use the chatrooms associated to a site where you're suspended. Clearly at least one French.SE moderator was OK with it, but maybe someone else wasn't. (Chat has inconsistent moderation, unfortunately.)
• Obviously, chat suspensions can also be specifically for bad behaviour in chat, rather than just for using rooms you shouldn't be using. A long chat suspension is likely to be based on a pattern of bad behaviour rather than one or two recent problematic posts. Unfortunately, chat suspensions aren't accompanied by mod messages to tell you what you did wrong. (Again, I don't know you and don't know why this particular suspension was applied.)
• You may have a chance of appealing this chat suspension, if you're active on other sites (where you're not suspended) and wish to use their chatrooms. It worked for me, many years ago. However, any unsuspension from chat is likely to be conditional on you not using the chatrooms of French.SE.