There has been some discussion recently about the way we handle NDTBs, and how it could be improved. Specifically, the issues revolve around users requesting temp bans for a specific length of time, then coming back much sooner than they had requested or otherwise removing the ban entirely. Since the point of this is supposed to be to help people stay off chat, that more or less defeats the purpose.
With that in mind (and after discussion in OP chat between the ops and admins) the revision of this structure is as follows:
1) Non-Disciplinary Temp Bans will have a hard minimum time limit of 7 days. When these bans go in, they'll be entered into Alexandra (instead of the #site19/17 banlist manually) and will not end until after she no longer enforces the ban.
2) These bans are mostly non-negotiable. Once you've got yourself one set up, that's pretty much it. It does nobody any favors to cut your ban short if you've requested it for a certain length. Since this is supposed to be about impulse control, consider this us helping you control your impulses1
3) Users who have a history of requesting bans that they then turn around and remove before the ban has ended may have their request rejected. A lot of this new proposal is intended to help weed out bans that aren't necessary or are "attention seeking", and encourage users to be responsible with their time. In a perfect world, we wouldn't need to use these temp bans because everybody would be able to manage themselves online appropriately, but given the demographics of our userbase this is something we'll still have to deal with.
Hopefully these changes will help streamline this process and remove some of the unnecessary baggage from ops. Obviously this process is subject to adjustment, so if you feel as if you have any better ideas (or objections entirely) feel free to mention them in this thread.