I do agree that TA has become less useful mostly because some places fake reviews. mostly when looking for restaurants (when it's a privately owned small place, the owner will work harder to fake his reviews)

some reviews are so obviously fake it's embarrassing....

the way's to avoid that:
1.compare ranking\reviews with other places like booking.com and expedia. if a place is ranked very high at TA and got bad score at expedia or booking.com...something is fishy
2. PICTURES!! that is the no.1 advantage of TA...being able to see how the place really looks....i look more at pictures then read reviews (i'm referring to hotel reviews)
3. read only reviews from "Star" reviewers. i'm a Top Contributor and take TA very seriously...and i'm pretty sure that most "Star" reviewers do the same and are reliable
4.read reviews that were "Terrible", see what the issue was about....was it because they did some mixup with the rooms the ruined the vacation (may be just a one time thing) or was it dirty room\noisy rooms. also sometimes people are just being too sensitive about something and gave "Terrible". that is also the place to understand if there is actually something terribly wrond with the hotel
5. Hunch! - after reading probably hundreds of reviews i thing i can get a hunch from TA about the quality of the hotel and seeing the whole picture fro the info you get
6. understand that some people have different taste then yours.....i'm a Luxury hotel lover....but some people are looking for the best bargain. and if they got a bed and a room that doesn't smell they will give it an excellent review.
7.a ranking for a place with 2000 reviews is more reliable then 100- reviews...

after all this said. i do believe that TA needs to enforce some policy to kick out fake reviews...like from new users to send proof of stay.

i truly love TA and it's concept, and i hate it when people abuse it...