The discussion revolves around restricting chat access for specific user groups in Discourse, particularly for users below Trust Level 1 or for problematic users. Shauny notes that while chat can be enabled for Trust Level 1+, there’s no built-in way to exclude certain users or groups from chat without publicly posting warnings. Moin suggests using the Discourse Dynamic Groups plugin to create a “chat allowed” group based on Trust Level 1, while excluding users via a separate “chat not allowed” group. However, putty points out that this solution may not be available to enterprise users since the plugin isn’t officially supported. RGJ confirms that Shauny is on the Communiteq hosting platform, which may support such plugins. Moin replies to putty, acknowledging the enterprise limitation but implying it’s worth checking. The conversation highlights a gap in Discourse’s native permissions system and explores plugin-based workarounds, with caveats around enterprise compatibility.
Currently you can allow chat for people in Trust Level 1 and above but there is no way to disallow chat for certain groups.
If we have a troublemaker who we believe is sending chat messages to people and being disruptive, but we don’t mind them posting publicly, there is no way to disable chat for that user (without putting them on trust level 0 which causes other issues).
Thanks.
I think currently the easiest solution is using Discourse Dynamic Groups to create a group of “chat allowed users” based on the trust level 1 group while excluding those you added to a “not allowed to chat” group.
So the setting for who is allowed to chat (or use DMs) is no longer TL1 but the dynamic group of TL1 without bad actors.
Shauny is on Communiteq hosting so he can use that plugin 
I checked that before I replied