Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where are they on-topic? Truth or fairness, as checked by moderators, isn't a standard for discussion anywhere else on HN. For that matter, does that mean you're checking the truth and/or fairness of all of these job postings?
They could be on topic in lots of places, assuming they relate to some interesting point under discussion and are not just a grudge against X. You're right in part, but standards aren't binary, they involve messy interpretation. There's no law of the excluded middle—it's all middle and it's all included. So instead of asking 'what are the axioms to be universally applied on this site', you need to ask 'what in this c…
Take yesterday's topic on Microsoft potentially acquiring GitHub. How many anonymous comments are there slagging Microsoft (or GitHub)? No one has any way to verify the credibility of comments there, either.
The question is: do complaining about a negative experience (real or imagined) present any long-term benefit to the community and to the original poster?
If the comment is junk or fake then the poster has the ability to respond as such (or profess ignorance). But the community gains by either being warned about a potential job opportunity or seeing how the hirer responds.
I understand not turning this into Glassdoor/Yelp bottom-feeding but I was specifically referencing the recent hiring practices of this particular company, not reviewing them as a whole or judging their leadership or corporate direction or promotion systems etc.
I think if you really want no replies it should be hardcoded into the HN architecture, but the antiseptic posting of job listing, without any potential input from people who've recently gone through the process, is IMHO a loss for the HN community -- if I just want unadorned job listings, I can get that many other places than HN, and with much better filtering technology.
I recognize this is a gray area but I really think commenters should be allowed to share interviewing experiences with companies who post here -- keeping HN from becoming a complaining ground is more complex than just banning comments, IMHO.
Thanks for listening.