I can't get beyond the basement popup on my Blackberry. It tries to center itself, but ends up too large so I can't click the accept button. And the new posts in the thread get marked as read even though I couldn't read them...

Still? I just got this thing like a month ago. Physical qwerty or bust!

I was able to switch to desktop mode to click the accept button on the basement popup.

What about an annual fund-raiser? My local public radio station does one twice a year where donors get a chance to win something basically every hour (not suggesting Pinside have an hourly reward, but maybe daily?). There's a concept of a sustaining member who has setup a payment plan and they're entered into every drawing.

Maybe vendors would donate prizes?

It seems like it would be possible to state a financial goal and do a donation drive to countdown the donations until the goal is met. Then wait a year (maybe do it twice a year?) and do it again.

I will also point out that the public radio station doesn't do commercials, per se. They have the DJs read out the companies who have donated. So maybe there's a place for vendors to donate and get a callout on a banner or something?

How about an OT flag for posts outside of the basement? You can have a setting in your account that if a post gets flagged by X Pinsiders, it doesn't show up for you without clicking it. Then those who like to have OT sidebars can do so without impacting the overall thread for the average user. Maybe any responses that quote an OT post get auto flagged?

Maybe it just needs to be more black and white. Either it's on-topic by virtue of a low off-topic rating, or it's off-topic.

If thumbs down comes back, maybe it's just thumbs up-thumbs down to register agreement/disagreement with the post and an optional Off-Topic flag if you're inclined to mark a post as off topic in hopes of eliminating that post from future Pinsiders' casual viewing of the thread.

Here's an example I can think of where something like that might be helpful:
Some time ago someone had posted a tech thread for JP and titled it something like "Can't get t-rex to eat balls". The first 5 or so posts were just innuendo jokes by people contributing nothing to the thread. I'd gladly mark those as OT if I ran into them in hopes that a future user with a similar issue could search for the thread and get the relevant info they need and not have to wade through garbage.