Imo this is actually a great thing, and the only instance where someone would need to reply to a recruitment post was to post their portfolio/contact information, so the commissioner could review their work before contacting.
However, this is easily resolved just by constantly checking your Discord friend list and asking people if they’re from the devforum post, or simply ask people to DM you their portfolio before exchanging contact information. 
Not a fan of this update… I utilized the replies as a way to sort through people who actually read my recruitment post rather than just spammed my discord with friend requests (which I mainly don’t accept for the sake of keeping my friends list clean) after seeing what type of payment I offered. This will definitely affect how I test people before interviewing them…
I somewhat agree, it was also kind of nice to see what other prices people were offering (I’d often get jobs by subtracting 
100 from other people’s offers)
Yeah, I noticed that happened to. I really don’t know if this is an update or not. I really hope this is not an update as this could mess up big developer’s hiring post when they ask to provide a portfolio on the comments. They should have a bot that could filter words like free models and other words.
Not a fan at all. As someone who doesn’t communicate on discord, this is going to kill me off. I respond to these topics with my portfolio, telling them to send me a DM. Often times people do not respond to DMs unless they are told I sent it. To @DevEngagementTeam, I beg of you, change this!
I’ve flagged this post to get the attention of staff for an official response, as I was told this is the correct process.
Hey all, this change was made to help reduce the amount of rule-breaking posts made in this category, whether these were off-topic, accusations or similar posts. I’ve updated the guidelines to reflect this change. Potential recruits will be able to reach out to you either by private message or whatever means of communication you provide (eg. application, social media).
While we understand concerns with this change, the rules we had in place only allowed for posts to be made by those interested in the opportunity, calling for longer conversations and discussions to be had in private messages. This essentially meant the only reason to reply to a Recruitment topic was to publicly let them know you were applying, which doesn’t serve a significant purpose other than to let others know they have competition.
The positives of this change far outweigh the negatives.
Then DM your portfolio? Luckily Discourse automatically adds the topic name you are DMing a user about, so there is context from just the title alone
Then sort your DM’s instead?
#collaboration:recruitment is notorious for housing a very toxic environment, whether it be people mini-modding, arguing about prices, (accusing of) scamming, all that. There was almost no professionalism there, this update is a chance to salvage it by at least not making any of those arguments public. If someone complains about prices and such disrespectfully in DM you can still flag the DM…
I understand how this would cause issues for people that normally get a lot of DevForum DMs/Discord friend requests, but it can easily be navigated by posting a Google Forum link asking people to provide their examples and contact information. (A lot of people in fact do this already.)
That way, the commissioner has a way of organizing who replies, and who would be the best candidate. In fact, I’d argue it would be a more efficient way since the recruitment category was getting filled with pointless, toxic comments.
If you’ve attempted DMing developer of larger games, I found they turned them off or don’t read them, as they get lots of them. This update is not worth it.
You are supporting moving things off platform? I don’t go off platform because there are too many scammers.
How will we let people know we sent them a DM?
Please reconsider!
Wait so why are they all being locked? Mine was just locked too, this is quite confusing.
To prevent the massive amount of rule-breaking replies that would derail like every thread ever.
I think that when the time passes everyone will become used to this and alternative ways of contacting/sorting/whatever. After all el tiempo lo cura todo (time heals all)
I already had to disable my DMs here once because of the fact that most members don’t know what proper etiquette is and spam me with advertisements of their own portfolios on a daily. I am just going to take my business elsewhere…
Most of my recruitment posts here are for quick jobs and I won’t be making a whole google form any time I want to hire someone to make one icon for me because I am too busy to do so myself.
If it’s a small thing, then surely contacting a developer that you are already familiar with, or doing a quick look-around in #collaboration:portfolios using tags, will sort that out.
I fully agree that this will make things a lot more inconvenient and impersonal. I’m not a fan of the update myself, but the pros far out-way the cons.
The tags are useless cus half the time, people spam unrelated tags for better search results or the portfolios people make are just “showcases” of their work so they can open their commissions for 2 days.
Ok now imagine this. What if the people you’ve hired previously are either too busy or you just didn’t like their work? Twitter is plagued with bots and discord groups like HD are… yea…
Honestly the only pros I see is that the people who overspend their time on the DevForum don’t have to spend it on flagging posts in the collab category.
This update is everything!! Finally, now people can’t cry and argue about each other’s payment offer 
Only downside I see to it is that now you can’t make a reply to warn people about scammers. Yes, the flagging system exists, but it isn’t instantaneous. I’m sure people would love it if they could just see a comment that says “hey, this dude’s a scammer” rather than contacting the person and finding out the hard way.
Not to mention, many people use replies to review people and their work to see whether they have had issues with other developers/ clients in the past.
while I agree that baseless accusations and arguments can break out, and that they definitely don’t belong on the devfourms, I think people should still be able to leave 1 review, whether it be negative or positive just so that the community can get a better view on the person that they are hiring or doing commissions for.
Edit:
also, questions that one person might have for the recruiter that apply for everyone may be have to asked over and over again in dms, causing an inconvenience to the hirer.
eg: asking for backup payment, more info on the job etc…
I agree. There are a few people I know of that are running studios, scam, and like to then recruit more people. I think that this is also especially bad for the new people to recruitment. They look at a post, see it has guaranteed payment, and automatically apply. My first jobs were a lot of that.
Aside from scam warnings, there are still a few reasons for opening topics.
Allowing beforehand warning: A lot of people are concerned about internet security, as they should be, but they don’t want to accept random friend requests. They have them apply by replying to the post and giving their discord, to let them know that they friended them, not a rando, and they also give their portfolio. I find this a very efficient way, since you can also get a sense of their skill by doing this.
Asking for more info: Some posts are not written as detailed as others, yes, but replying allows to get more info. I see that the point of this is to get info via DM, but that means one person is getting the information. This also ties into preventing scams. If the person suspiciously dodges giving info, they are probably a scammer.
Conclusion
Personally, people flagging posts was fine. I think there are a number of advantages to keeping #collaboration the way it was. Of course, @DevEngagementTeam has the final say.
There are many ways to avoid being scammed, like doing background checks, talking with past contractors, asking to be paid in milestones.
Discourse has a DM feature so you can let them know through DMs that you friended them/want to friend them on Discord. So non-argument.
Again, my point here:
I’ve sent DMs instead of responding to #collaboration:recruitment posts, and I never get a response, except when I put, “Sent you a DM!”
Then that is fault of the OP for being unaware of the existence of DM’s /shrug
also
get discord man; really useful tool and some recruitment topics ive seen require the use of discord