Why don't more companies interact with their customers this way, using public forums as a source of consumer feedback? Certainly, using any kind of public forum for support means that a company will be faced with disgruntled customers. But much of the time, disgruntled customers are right -- and they're giving you valuable feedback. Make disgruntled customers happy, and the process will probably improve the quality of your product. Of course, some disgruntled customers are just never happy, but other customers reading their posts can see that. The community will recognize the never-happy customers for what they are.

Katharine Mieszkowski (katharinem@fastcompany.com), a Fast Company senior writer, is based in San Francisco. She owes the better part of her eclectic social life to events found on craigslist. You can visit craigslist on the Web (www.craigslist.org), or contact Craig Newmark by email (craig@cnewmark.com).

Sidebar: (Virtual) Organizing Manual

Craig Newmark has devoted the past five years to maintaining and expanding one of the most celebrated communities on the Web. Here are some of his guidelines for community organizers.

Uncommonly good communities have members with common interests. Often, those interests are mundane rather than profound -- people who live in the same city or have the same job title. But note: People with common interests can have extremely different values. "Think of creating a community as building your own dysfunctional family," jokes Newmark.

To generate strong connections, provide down-to-earth information. When most of us think of Web communities, we think of intense discussions with lots of passionate people. But the way to generate that kind of intense discussion is to present people with concrete information. "We're all bombarded with too much information, most of which is irrelevant," says Newmark. "Give people an easy way to find what's useful to them."

It's virtual and physical, not virtual or physical. The online world may be a powerful complement to the physical world, argues Newmark, but it's not a substitute. The strongest virtual communities tend to encourage participants to connect in the real world. "Proximity humanizes connection," he says. "Seeing Web pages of people whom you meet or could meet in the flesh -- that's what matters."

Think globally, act locally. One of the most popular mantras of the Web, "Get big fast," just doesn't apply to online communities. If the strength of a community is built on the depth of the connections among members, then almost by definition, community building is slow, grassroots work. "I don't think there's any way to make a community get big fast," says Newmark. "Communities grow organically, and that's always slow at first."

Sidebar: Here's Craig's List

What sites does one of the Web's leading community organizers visit to keep up with the most recent developments in online communities? Here are some of Craig Newmark's favorites.

BabyCenter.com, ThirdAge.com

These mutual-support communities provide parents and "third-agers" with a place to talk, share information, and give one another a break.

Deja.com, Epinions.com

People share opinions about different products through ratings and reviews. These sites help you decide what to buy based on what others say.

eHow.com

This new site asks experts to write instructions about how to do stuff -- anything from polishing shoes to fixing a leaky faucet. But people can also make contributions about things that they know how to do. It's not as community-oriented as some sites, but it's useful.

Maximag.com

Maxi is one of a number of women's Webzines linked together in the network www.chickclick.com. It brings together people who share a certain style and similar points of view. This is more a community of interest than of location.

NetDynamics.com, Quicken.com

These two commercial sites have real community. Sun Micro-systems's NetDynamics site has a customer-support area in which people help each other with the server product. On the boards of Intuit's Quicken site, people discuss money issues, ranging from small-business strategies to retirement planning.

NoEnd.org

Bay Area Internet developers get together twice a month in person and also share a mailing list. The site's mission is "to humanize the technology we all work with." As the site explains, "We are not about money, or jobs, or deals, or selling -- those are just great by-products that we've found appear naturally in great abundance if not focused on directly. We exist as a group simply to relax and bring the pace of the Net down a few notches." This is an example of a community that is about more than just networking.