Netscape's Professional Connections community employed "notable industry observers and consultants" -- well-known technology journalists, Web developers and community builders -- to direct conversation on topics ranging from "Sites That Work" to "Web Culture" to "Tech News Today." As a result, the forums fostered a tight community of tech-oriented chatters whose conversations were a bit more focused and close-knit than you'd typically find on open Web discussion boards.

But last Wednesday, with no warning, the forums were abruptly turned off, the hosts let go, and the community members left to wonder what, exactly, happened to their home. The demise of the community is a byproduct of the AOL takeover of Netscape, but that doesn't help the community members whose online hangout has been suddenly shuttered.

"There's a lot of annoyed users out there. This is not a responsible way for a corporation to run online communities," says Elizabeth Lewis, who until last week was one of the Netcenter community hosts. "Those of us who are in community building for the long haul are concerned about how Netscape did this. It's not so much that they shut the community down -- although I don't think they gave the forums enough of a go -- but it's how they did it."

The Professional Connections forums have undergone several changes since they initially launched in March 1998 -- including a site redesign last November that widened forums so that they were focused on Web development ("Netscape was trying to broaden the scope of the community, trying to be more of a full-service portal, in order to more widely compete with Excite and Yahoo," posits Julie Polito, a former community host). The "Professional Connections" moniker was replaced with the more general "Netscape Community Forums," ostensibly in an attempt to draw a more diverse crowd of people. And some of the high-profile hosts, who were paid $500 a month for their efforts, departed.

Still, the members who chatted daily in the Netscape forums -- and host and member estimates put that number in the low thousands -- found it an exceptionally valuable place to hang out online. "It was more intellectual than most communities, in my opinion. The topics were quite deep," says Nellie Vrolyk, a microbiologist from Canada who participated in the forums for over a year.

"I learned quite a bit from the hosts and was able to take some of those skills and implement them on my site," says John Einhorn, an information systems manager from Indiana who used tips and connections he made in the e-commerce forums to build his online store, The Cap Shack. "This was the first type of online community that I was interested in -- most seem to degrade to sexual innuendos after three questions. It was a refreshing change."

When AOL purchased Netscape in November, however, most of the community members and hosts suspected that changes were inevitable. As expected, Netscape soon decided that it would be letting some of the hosts go and consolidating the forums from 20 specific topic areas to just 6 general ones. That redesign took place on Friday, March 26, and though many of the community members grumbled about the changes, a lot still stuck around.

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