I disagree with some of your post. I think the reason that tripadvisor ratings do not correlate with star ratings is primarily due to the 'value for money' issue combined with reviews from infrequent travelers rather than hotels 'gaming the system'.

As more people review for tripadvisor, you get people with less traveling experience doing the reviewing. These reviewers are far more likely to rate on the extremes rather than the middle. If they have only stayed in 10 hotels in their life, the best one will get a top rating, whether or not, it really would rate that if they had stayed in 100 hotels or more. Equally, they will really punish the hotel which failed to satisfy them in some way, even if in the grand scheme of things the failure was relatively minor.

When I review, I apply the value for money proposition. So, if a five-star hotel charging, multiple several 100€'s a night, I expect the service to be spot on - no inconsistencies in the service. If I get a mix of four- and five-star service, I will rate the hotel much lower, than a 90€ three-star hotel where I get a mix of three get a mix of three- and four- star service.

As a user of tripadvisor, I have always found the comparative rankings to be relatively useless, because too often they compare apples to oranges. How do you compare a high-end property which doesn't quite meet expectations, with a one-star property which completely exceeds them?

I find it best to read the individual reviews to see what people found good and bad about the hotels, and think about how I would react to those same experiences. I also take one-time reviews with a grain of salt, not so much because they could be shills for the hotel (although that possibility does exist), but also because the reviewer does not demonstrate that they have the experience necessary to properly review a hotel. One-time reviews are often from people who have had a once-in-a-lifetime good or bad experience and are often not representative of a property.

That said, if a hotel has a lot of bad reviews, I take it seriously, no matter how many reviews each reviewer has written.