>>customer input must be valid for this to work.
>>Every kid with an opinion out there will be
>>screaming for what they see as "improvements",

I was thinking about that recently ... unfortunately, forums kinda suck for customer feedback.  There's a lot of whining, in-fighting, repetition, rants, etc.  IOW, they've got the problems you describe.

I was trying to think of a way to better format such feedback.

One idea I had was the notion of a site dedicated to bug tracking and fix prioritization.  I could work something like this (admittedly, this idea is half-baked):

• users submits bugs and/our suggestions for improvements/enhancements (maybe those 2 item types are tracked separately).
  
• some core group of moderators reviews those submissions and decides whether it makes it into the master list.  this is mostly to avoid duplication, not necessary to filter out stupid ideas)
  
• every register site users has, let's say 100 votes to pass out ... each user can dedicate as may or as few of those votes to each bug/fix as (s)he deems important.  IOW, the user was a limited number of votes, and he sets his/her priroties based on how he doles out his votes.
  
• users can reallocate/re-divvy the votes at any time.
  
• at certain set points (time-based, or after a patch), the votes are re-set to 0, and the users have to re-vote.  
  
• Users can also perhaps cast votes for an item to be closed/remove from the list ... or, perhaps, every week, then bottom 50% of items are removed from the list, to keep it manageable.

you might still have a forum backing the site, but I think fronting it with an active polling/voting mechanism would be cool, would be more reflective of user interest (dare I sya democratic), and be easier than sifting through forums of awkward pre-adolescent ramblings.