(OT) I am given the idea that popping up a banner soliciting an address for e-mail updates (as this site does) is a standard practice on many blogging platforms

(OT) I am given the idea that popping up a banner soliciting an address for e-mail updates (as this site does) is a standard practice on many blogging platforms, and that it is apparently quite effective at retaining users, but as a user I find it quite obnoxious. I opened this page in a new tab, and when I clicked over to it I did not immediately recall what the page was about. The 'close' button is also small and hard to see. I purposely avoid subscribing to e-mail updates because I get very little to nothing out of them that I could not also get elsewhere, e.g. through an RSS reader, at my own convenience or intent. E-mail updates almost always read to me as advertisement, similar to dead tree junk mail. Compounding this annoyance, though this is squarely in the realm of my own responsibility, I configure my browsers to clear cookies every user session. So doing allows me to easily be logged out of services simply by closing my browser and has the side benefit of perhaps confounding tracking services just a little bit. Unfortunately it also means that any of these websites which I visit very rarely will display the subscription pop-up every time.