As to the suggestion to allow holding of some alt-coins. I think it would be unnecessary complexity to the whole system. More book keeping etc for the pool.
IF you want to collect some alt-coins "just in case" then take your btc from WP and go buy whatever you wish to hold. Sure you have to pay a transaction fee but that is probably minimal in the big picture.
This is less complexity than all of the yammering for sub 1 difficulty coins and vardiff. This feature request does not affect mining in anyway, and any database that can't handle a few additional fields per record is junk anyway. The only complexity is additional work for WP (which I admit would not be insignificant).
Must say I'm surprised by the negative response to this. Perhaps more posts complaining about vardiff, payouts, asics, BTC/MH, or stats would be preferred? Maybe I'll just go look for answers on the last couple pages and post questions as if I hadn't seen them.