I don't know Google's position.  However, I do have thoughts about this...

Great websites link to other great websites all of the time.  If you have a great website you can feel confident about linking to another great website that links to you.... but this is usually not done by agreement, it is done for the reason of attribution [such as in a footnote or reference] or in a helpful gesture to your visitor [done instead of giving an unlinked mention because you are damn selfish or scared to link to another great website that competes in your space].  People who run great websites are too busy running a great websites and don't have time to fart around swapping links.  They don't gotta do it.

I think that obvious gaming of the system isn't going to work much of the time.  Google is smart enough to know that one crappy website linking to another crappy website is done to game the system.  Nobody links to crappy websites, except other crappy websites who can't get a link any other way AND people who are paid to link to crappy websites.

Our practice on linking is... we only link to pages on other websites that have content that is superior in some way to the content that we have on our page.... OR.... link to pages where attribution is appropriate - much like the footnotes in wikipedia.

Just stating a couple of facts and a couple of things that I believe about those facts.....  I'll be clear to state the parts that are beliefs below.

1. If you have a lot of thin content pages on a website then you run the risk of Google seeing those thin content pages and slapping the domain with a Panda problem.  I believe that can cause reduced rankings across the entire domain.

2. Google recently said that they are going to stop following the links on noindex pages.  From that, I believe that some pagerank will be lost from every link that enters them.  I believe that can result in lower rankings for the entire domain.

If I owned the site above.  I would place all of these pages where they can be safely noindexed without causing a loss of pagerank and not produce a Panda problem.  That would require them to be in a subdomain that is noindexed or on another domain that is no indexed.

That's what I would do with these pages.

I really like Stpehan's idea of "indexed collections of complaints".

The amount of time that it takes to rank has a lot of variables...  the variables that you have some control over area....

A)  the quality of your content

B)  the strength of your website

C)  your ability to get links into the new page

The actions of your visitors are also important.  They can share, they can engage, or they can do one of these or neither.

The actions of your competitors are also important.  They can be working on content for similar keywords, they can be working on links to their competing page, or working on links to their entire website.

All of this is why SEOs can't guarantee rankings or "time to rank".  But mainly, they don't have control over their competitors.

The new URLs seem pretty verbose.

If this was my site, I would consider...

https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide/Inline-Skates/
https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide/Kids-Inline-Skates/
https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide/Inline-Hockey-Skates/
https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide/Aggressive-Skates/

My breadcrumbs would look similar....

Home >> Buying Guide >> Inline Skates

I think that there are many correct answers to your question... my strong bias will be shown in my response.

1. If you want a keyword optimization answer, then the keyword or keyphrase that you want to rank for should be in the title tag on the left.

2. How the company name appears is governed by marketing, ego, arrogance, and sometimes by common SEO sense. Some businesses or their owners/directors feel a need to SHOUT their company name in everyone's face.  These businesses place their company name on the left of the title tag at the expense of their page optimization.  Those who have it really bad got to have that company name in ALL CAPS.

3. Other business owners feel that the topic that they are publishing takes priority over the name of their company, so they place the title of the article on the left of the title tag and their business name on the right.  They use UpLow or in ALL CAPS depending upon how hard they usually pound their chests.

4. Some people have "a message to get out" and that message is bigger than their egos or the amount of noise that they try to make when they pound their chests.  So they use the title tag to the fullest extent possible to convey their message.  They know that every person with common sense will see their URL in the SERPs and the name of their business at the top of their website.

There you have four options.  Choose one that works for you.

All of the content that you have on a subdomain and all of the links that the subdomain attracts could have been working to strengthen your root domain.

In Google you are going out to fight the heavyweights.  Do you want to do that with a couple light weight platforms or do you want to unite the clans and attack with all that you got.   That is the choice that you make by running subdomains.

I moved and redirected my subdomains into folders on the main website a long time ago and the results were great.

For me, there are two issues.

A) If one of the variants is incorrect or ignorant then my visitors will see it.  This is a concern of people who run formal or academic sites. Some people might not link to me If I don't know how to spell some of the most commonly used words on my site.

B) Incorrect or ignorant usage could be a slight deduction from Google.