I think TA's reviews can be skewed or have problems in some geographic locations that they don't tend to have in others.

Cancun, for example, has a big problem in acheiving objective hotel reviews because so many of them are written by people who own timeshare weeks in the resorts. How objective can they be when they are wanting to protect their timeshare investment and their ability to sell off weeks?? Several of the Palace Resorts that are in
TA's Top 10 hotels list (by popularity ratings) are timeshare resorts-- and the majority of the reviews have been written by owners.

So I don't use TA for Cancun at all.

Other areas, I wouldn't plan a trip without it. The moderators don't do a very good job of managing the quality of the forums either.