The Blue pop ups were an unexpected and suspicious [late night UK] imposition on OUR browsers and computers
- simple as that.

A thread title from Max prepaing us such an experiment would have been sufficient to allay all potential mudcat user questions
and concerns regarding issues of site security:
and having been properly informed that this was a legitimate 'survey request' and not a potential site 'hack' to be wary of,
many mudcatters would be more at ease to submit well considered positive replies.

That would have been easy fair and reasonable,

Every moment on the internet we are bombarded by all kinds of ugly distracting corporate advertising animations
and pop up/unders.

All of it a burden on our computer processing resources; and a larger percentage of it less than benign in intent.

That's why we as 'informed consumers' are forced into having to resort to deploying tiresome software counter measures
such as 'Ad Blockers'
which themselves can cause additional problems and conflicts with browser components.

It's a running perpetual battle between us and all those despicable corporate power greedy profiteering usurpers
of our personal internet liberties,
... and other international criminal gangs.

This is the wider context that popular forum site admins need to always be responsibly aware of when implementing
and surprising users with any well intentioned unexpected 'improvements' and developments.

Even more so with a bunch of notoriously die hard anti authoritarian paranoid conspiracy theorist misfits like mudcat members.