As mentioned by Robert last week, the interest by SE Inc. already existed. And as I explained in my answer there: it must have taken a lot of effort to rec-compute all those numbers. This is for sure not something that you do within a few days.
Regarding "bad timing", what I find more worrisome: that again, SE Inc. makes a decision, doesn't ask for feedback, pushes it out, and of course, only announces it via blog. That is the real issue here.
And the fact that the announcement was discussed with the moderator community upfront doesn't change anything about that last complaint.