Good luck! I still wonder if you can't you sidestep the free-form and manual intervention stuff by giving those threads some shape via a monthly posting feature on ycombinator.com/jobs?
At the end of the day the challenges likely stem from "Who's hiring?" being just a thread with comments on a very spartan message board. I would have said you can solve these issues with an app or website, but you already have one, so it would be easier to just leverage that and then the sky is the limit–add any features you want!
ycombinator/jobs would presumably not be the right venue for an open job board but yes we could build software to better support Who Is Hiring threads. I've always resisted doing so but maybe we eventually will. I'm not sure how that would help with the ghosting problem though...
At the end of the day the challenges likely stem from "Who's hiring?" being just a thread with comments on a very spartan message board. I would have said you can solve these issues with an app or website, but you already have one, so it would be easier to just leverage that and then the sky is the limit–add any features you want!