I like the "public access" forum. Hopefully, it would get out of control pretty quickly and become a mishmash of posts. But, that'd mean a lot of people were on here.
I like the advertisement idea. Not aggravating ones, though. I don't want to see "Tide" banners here. But, some things might get our attention.
For instance, contact "The Teaching Company". I don't know that they do internet ads, but they'd be a great company to advertise here. They have hundreds of audio and video lessons that people like us would be interested in. We could even create sub-forums solely reserved to discuss those. Right now, I'm looking at the CD set for "The American Mind" and remembering some of the more interesting lessons.
Another idea for an advertiser is Mental Floss magazine. So full of random, trivial crap - just like everyone here!
I'm not opposed to ads, so long as they aren't random.