I guess I'm cautiously optimistic. On one hand, this kinda backpedals on what they've previously (and also from a long time ago) shown from research: permanently removing players from chat just means they'll do other things. So what's made them change their minds on this?
But, maybe that's a small minority of players, or if not, the smaller percentage that aren't going to take advantage of this regardless. Hopefully it provides benefit to players who can't hold back from typing, but still want to improve.
And also, there's not going to be much of an excuse for continued punishments if players opt to not use this feature after prior punishments. That's kinda what we see from punishments posted here anyhow: that players are going above and beyond to make a negative game experience for other players.
My guess is, it'll help first time punishments out, with decreasing utility the more frequent/severe the penalties are.