Handling job postings with no specified location

Understood that the group postings are going away "soonish", meaning anywhere from one month to 1.6 years, the latter of which is the approximate time I feel like I've been battling these useless job postings. :)

Yes, they're not prevalent nor pervasive like a spam comment bot problem might be, but that doesn't make them any less of a black hole in groups.drupal.org. We have thousands of readers in as many different groups, and every time a job posting is slung out there which states, in effect, "You have to live/move to right here or we won't hire you". But then they don't actually say which country, state, city, town, burg, etc, but you're suggesting that the thousands of readers who might be potential applicants should just contact the company directly? Even when the only contact information on their posting is a link to their bloody application form?

I just don't see how us enabling job posters to waste thousands of reader's time by simply ignoring their laziness for another $1.6 years benefits the members of g.d.o. No, ignoring it completely is by far the lowest priority solution, in my opinion.

E) What if we simply unpublish a job posting that demands a location but doesn't specify one? The author would still be able to see it, right? And the content wouldn't become lost, since all it really needs is a minor tweak before it can be republished...

Yes, I think applicants who want more information about a job should ask employers directly, regardless of how many applicants there are. If the employer hasn't made that easy, that's their choice. Ultimately employers can and will waste applicants' time in many different ways. In that sense, it is somewhat similar to spam.

One place it differs from spam is applicants are actively opting into the process and can opt out at any point. If an employer is wasting your time, you can stop reading what they post. If job posts in general are wasting your time, you can unsubscribe from them entirely. If we could similarly opt out of spam, it would be a non-issue.

Job posts also differ from spam in being complicated to moderate. Spam is generally very easy to identify, but identifying an incomplete job post requires knowledge of the employer and their motivations that we don't have. Joel seems to be thinking that no remote work means the employer has a specific location required, but it doesn't always. The company whose job posts prompted this discussion has offices in at least 3 different cities, so there's a good chance they don't require a specific location, only that someone work on site somewhere they have an office. They may even be looking to open a new office wherever they can find enough good applicants. That would still be non-remote work, but they wouldn't have a location to mention. Or maybe they already have new office locations they would prefer not to publicize to anyone other than applicants. Or maybe they just forgot to mention location. Or maybe they specifically wanted applicants who are willing to move anywhere for the right job. We don't know.

And I don't think we, as moderators, should be involved in finding out. There's almost never any conflict of interest with spam, but there's a huge potential conflict of interest on job posts. It's very hard for moderators to both remain and appear impartial, as there's a very good chance we're either trying to hire the same candidates or applying for the same jobs.