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Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

How do you propose that we enforce it, even if we had the resources to do so? We can't tell which job ads are real and which ones aren't, just as we can't tell which posters in "Who Wants to Be Hired" are real and which one's aren't. There's a lot of fraud and heartache on both sides of this transaction right now. Sorting wheat from chaff is an unsolved problem. To work on that, we'd have to become specialists in it, which is not going to happen.

If you want, you could take a look at some of my past explanations about this as well - they're listed in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45094610. If you do that, and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.

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The solution has been mentioned in the threads you linked, and I haven't seen any argument against it - let users share their experiences and/or question job postings in the replies. Heck, the author responded to my comment and had mine not been detached, people could have read the exchange and come to their own conclusions. You're simply protecting the companies with this type of one sided moderation. The way to combat fraud isn't to prevent people from speaking out against it.

If you aren't capable of telling what postings are real/not real (and fair enough, it's a hard problem) what makes you think you can do the same for the replies?

I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling like it's very one sided, and in the current market which heavily favours hirers over seekers it's just another thing going against the seekers. Who often have real concrete stressors like the threat of homelessness.

Either that or remove the rules that by your own words are unenforceable, so people aren't mislead into thinking this board is more curated than, say, indeed or LinkedIn.

> makes you think you can do the same for the replies

We can't, and that's the issue. There's no fair way of adjudicating which such complaints are true and valid, vs. which are partly true but distorted, vs. which are outright false.

It seems to me that the status quo is the least-bad feasible option, which is why we stick with it, even though of course it has downsides. I still think the Who Is Hiring threads are valuable, even with those downsides, and trying to do significantly better is one of those things it's important to say 'no' to. The problem is not that it wouldn't be valuable—it's that it would be valuable, but would consume too much of our limited resources and ultimately distract from the main goal of trying to run a good (or good-enough) forum.

I don't know if it's about trying to do significantly better, but rather who these threads are for. If they're for the seekers, you would let them speak freely about their experiences. If it's for the companies, it makes sense to censor replies. Unfortunately you're put in a position to make this choice no matter if you want to or not.

Thanks for listening to feedback :)

Just a personal opinion, but as an occasional job seeker here, I prefer the current system, seeing "no complaints in replies" policy as efficiency, not censorship. Were it not the case I suspect many job postings would become discussion battlegrounds and people looking for brief summaries would have to scroll through pages of discussions.

It is a painful process for both the seekers (who feel they are being ghosted) and the employers (who feel they are being spammed by AI bots); IMO the best approach is to follow the general HN guidance of "be kind" and "assume good intentions". And if a company ghosted you, downvote their post. My 2c.

I think you've responded to this better than I ever have - thank you!

> "I suspect many job postings would become discussion battlegrounds"

I suspect they wouldn't. I suspect companies that ghost and post fake jobs wouldn't even reply. And companies that have real job posts would reply and have a chance to convince the job is real.

People already have to scroll a ton of job posts that are not for them (due to stack, location, seniority, whatever) and the [-] button is pretty efficient in hiding long discussions.

The way we think of it, it's equally for both sides, hirers and seekers, and we're just trying to be fair to both. I get that it doesn't necessarily feel that way.

I am in favor of not making comments about suspicious posts off-topic. Votes and comments is the natural way that all disputes are handled in this forum.

The [-] button is a pretty good solution for long discussions in a job post.

Let seekers share their experience is a pretty useful signal, even if there is no way to know if the seeker is telling the truth. But downvotes are even more secretive and are allowed.

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