Just for a frame of reference, and so you don't think I'm some whiney T.A. noob: I joined in October 2016, my overall level is 5 (of 6) and I have 77 contributions. Please see the bottom for screenshots and a list of cities where my reviews come from.
TripAdvisor logo

What Is TripAdvisor.com?

Trip Advisor is a place where people can contribute reviews of restaurants, theaters, hotels and more, and people looking for info on them can read the reviews. It's more robust than Google, allowing for an extensive review, photos, and a range of questions you can answer in addition to the review. It's a little bit difficult to navigate, but it's useful for people who want to know what others think about somewhere.

What We Contributors Get

We get T.A. points, levels (I'm part-way to the highest level of 6), and badges.

Do points have monetary value?
TripCollective points do not have monetary value and cannot be redeemed for anything.

I am part of a Tripadvisor program that helps me earn airline miles. Do TripCollective points count toward this?
No, TripCollective points cannot be redeemed for anything and do not earn you points toward airline miles or any other travel partnerships associated with Tripadvisor.

Badges and levels are just an ego boost and really don't have any value. Points, as quoted above, have none, either. I have always done it to help other people but I'm sure some people look at it competitively. The fact that it allows for far more characters than Google reviews was always a plus, too.

So, the truth is that we get nothing for our efforts other than the satisfaction of helping others (or, for the miscreants, misleading others). Google has given me some rewards but they were either of no interest to me or I couldn't even use them (e.g. I got a credit of $7 through the Slice app, but there were no participating pizzerias in my area).

Minor Irritations for Contributors

One of the things that has always been kind of irksome is the fact that if you screw up your review and need to edit it, Trip Advisor doesn't allow that. If you've got something to correct, add, change or remove, there's no way to do it. You have to delete your review and then (hopefully you copied all the text and still have the photos) create a new one. Granted, if you've kept your photos and copied your text, that doesn't take very long to redo, but the full process is a bit unwieldy - as if the DevOps team can't quite figure out how to make it easier for contributors...or don't care. I complained about it a couple of years ago, but they've made no effort to improve the process of redoing a review since then.

Contributors are the lifeblood of Trip Advisor. Without us putting up reviews of all these places around the globe, there just isn't much left IMHO. TripAdvisor doesn't even make it particularly easy to find things. For example, if I want to find a list of my pending reviews, there's no easy way to do that - it doesn't appear on the drop-down menus from my profile avatar and other links. If I've just completed a review and try to go back to it, however, then a message pops up that gives me the option to view my pending review. It seems like it USED to be easy to find those pending reviews, but now I can't find that option.

If you notice an error for a place, it's not easy to submit a correction like it is with Google. For example, for Pete Delois' Recreations Outlet, I noticed that the place name is incorrectly spelled "Recreation" instead of "Recreations", but there's no easy way to submit a correction.

A Major Deterrent for Contributors

And then there is the "drop dead, contributors" attitude of T.A. Here's what I mean - if your review doesn't follow all their rules, no matter how innocent the mistake or valid the info they don't like, they'll just delete it and send you an email telling you why, giving you a link so you can create a new review, and providing you a copy of the text you wrote (no photos!). There is NO option to fix it while it's still pending. It's either approved or deleted. That's a pretty crappy way to treat people who get NOTHING from T.A. in return.

But wait, it gets worse! Although the length of your review can be quite long, when the automated email gets sent to you with the TEXT of your review, they only forward about the first 2,400 characters of your review - everything else after that is truncated. When you write long reviews like mine, that is more than frustrating! That their developers couldn't be bothered to make sure the full text was transferred is just...stupidly lazy. I studied programming so I know it is not hard to do.

Let me give you an example. T.A. doesn't like links to websites in the reviews, even if the links are to the website of the place you're reviewing, and they don't provide a place for you to add that link, either. On 2/2/20, I wrote 4 reviews of places we'd visited: Johnny Chan 2, Lazer Kraze, Scene 75 and Pete Delois' Recreations Outlet (all in the eastern Cincinnati, Ohio area). You'll find what I wrote for each of these places on Google (because I submit my reviews to Google, too) but TA deleted all but Scene 75 immediately because I linked to each place's website in those 3 reviews.

Here's the text of one of the rejection emails they sent me. Notice the truncated text of my review. I've included the actual link addresses in the body of the email for your convenience.
screen shot of the beginning of email notice from Trip Advisor

Action Requested on your Review for Johnny Chan 2

Tripadvisor <Members@e.tripadvisor.com>
Feb 2, 2020, 11:59 PM
to me

Tripadvisor 
We believe in "The Right to Write"

Dear Glenn M,

We need you to make some changes and resubmit your review to comply with our guidelines.

Reviews are designed to provide advice to your fellow travelers, not to advertise a service or business. Please do not include commercial or promotional content of any kind. This includes URLs / web site addresses / links to other web sites.

If there is a web site you would like to share with our travel community, please do so in the Travel Forum (https://www.tripadvisor.com/ForumHome) section of our site.

To submit the revised review: copy and paste the text of your original review for Johnny Chan 2 (provided below) into this form (https://www.tripadvisor.com/UserReviewEdit-gCincinnati-d394863), make your edits and click submit.

For more information, check out our review guidelines (https://www.tripadvisorsupport.com/hc/en-us/articles/200614797-Our-guidelines-for-traveler-reviews).

Thanks for being part of the TripAdvisor community!

TripAdvisor Support Team

Johnny Chan 2

Cincinnati

Reasonable prices for the most part and fairly tasty Chinese food

742706630

Parking: Lots
Cleanliness: Very good
Ambiance: Semi-formal
Service: Very good

As with the other area Chinese restaurants I've visited, it's owned and operated by Chinese people. It has a wide selection on its menu, as well as daily specials, some of which range up to $35/plate. The average entree seems to be pretty reasonably priced ($9-15).

It is, like Number 1 Kitchen, Milford, far better than Chinatown Buffet, Milford. In some ways, it's better than No 1 Kitchen, such as the fact that there's a large dining area, a bar, 2 fish tanks, and no stench, and they seem to use more authentic vegetables, too. That said, however, we found that the flavors weren't quite as good as at No 1 Kitchen. http://johnnychan2.com/menu/entrees.html

We went there late for my son's birthday and the only other customer left when we arrived. Fortunately, the waitress was born here and spoke flawless English, although she couldn't interrupt the owner to help because that would've been very rude according to their culture. The owner herself came over and inserted herself in the efforts of the waitress to take our order. She seemed a bit stern, but she answered my questions about the food that I wasn't familiar with.

The food arrived in a timely manner. We started with shrimp egg rolls for the kids and vegetable for me. They were nothing special, but I'm not a big egg roll lover. My kids didn't think they were as good as at No 1 Kitchen. I prefer steamed spring rolls! The hot mustard (which uses the same horseradish used in wasabi), when mixed with the sweet and sour sauce, made all the difference.

Our dumplings/potstickers/wontons then arrived and I was disappointed. My kids didn't think they were as good as at No 1 Kitchen. There was nothing wrong with them other than that they didn't have that characteristic flavor I've come to expect of both the sauce and the filling, so they were kind of bland.

My daughter ordered Kung Pau Delight in the Nest, which was served on a bed of lightly fried glass (rice) noodles, inside fried noodles shaped like a bowl (the noodles are actually placed over a bowl and it's deep-fried together), with a very enjoyable, slightly piquant sauce and mixture of meats and veggies. I thought the shrimp was a bit old, but not unpleasant, and some of the veggies were undercooked. Of course, she had the most expensive meal a

 
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I get that they don't want links in the text, but it's a simple matter for their software to strip those links out of any review so fast that you'll never see it happen. Also, I only gave a link to the website of the place I was reviewing. At least Google just refuses to let me submit my review and marks up the link so I know that's the problem. What's the big deal?

Well, I was irritated enough this time (I rarely forget about that rule - this isn't the first time I've had a review deleted) because I got fed up after putting in all that time for 4 reviews, only to get a truncated version back. So, after wading through their convoluted help page, I found the contact webform and submitted my request that they improve the facilities for us poor slobs who write free reviews for them to prevent this from happening. I also made sure, since it's happened before and I've complained before, that I was done with it - "either improve or I'm gone." Their response demonstrated to me that they really do NOT care about contributors - we may provide the data that makes their money, but there are so many of us, apparently, that the loss of someone like me means nothing to them.

Here's the response I got back from "Joanna B." at Trip Advisor. I have excluded the text of my review that she was kind enough to quote - in full - for me.

My User Account - Reviews - Question about Guidelines [ ref:_00DA0I0Rf._5001Y1Nmg3S:ref ]

help@tripadvisorsupport.com
Mon, Feb 3, 10:18 PM (1 hour ago)
to me
 
Hello Glenn,
 
Thank you for contacting TripAdvisor.
 
We are very sorry to hear about the situation you experienced in difficulty in submitting your reviews. In this case, in order to provide helpful advice for our travelers about first-hand experiences, we do not allow reviews that advertise a service or business. Please do not include promotional content of any kind, including URLs, web site addresses, or links to other web sites.

In addition, the ability to edit reviews is not available, and we apologize for any inconvenience. However, you are more than welcome to remove your current review and resubmit it with any corrections!
 
We hope you will consider resubmitting your review without any promotional content. Once you are ready to do so, you can click HERE.
 
For your convenience, we have copied your original review text below:
...

So, I'm done with T.A., and I'm done with this diatribe/review.

drawing of a cop giving the finger

If anyone can recommend a better place than T.A. and Google to submit reviews, I'm interested! I'll probably transfer all my reviews there if I have time. Or, if all else fails, I will just post them here on Steemit.

Proof of My Participation on T.A.

Yes, I edited these screenshots a bit to make everything fit, so they may not look optimal or complete, but the data is real.

screenshot of my stats on TripAdvisor.com: 77 contributions

Source: https://www.tripadvisor.com/Profile/274glennm

screenshot of my 26 badges, edited for size

Source: https://www.tripadvisor.com/members-badgecollection/274glennm

screenshot of the maps showing where my contributions are located in the US and Indonesia

Source: https://www.tripadvisor.com/Profile/274glennm?tab=trips

Continent	Country	City	# of Contributions
North America	United States	WI: Milwaukee	18
North America	United States	OH: Milford	10
Asia	Indonesia	Yogyakarta Region	6
North America	United States	OH: Cincinnati	3
North America	United States	IL: Crystal Lake	3
North America	United States	WI: Greenfield	2
North America	United States	IL: Schaumburg	2
North America	United States	WI: West Allis	2
Asia	Indonesia	Central Java: Baturaden	1
North America	United States	KY: Berea	1
Asia	Indonesia	Central Java: Borobudur	1
North America	United States	GA: Doraville	1
North America	United States	WI: Hales Corners	1
Asia	Indonesia	Jakarta	1
North America	United States	TN: Knoxville	1
North America	United States	IL: Lake Forest	1
Asia	Indonesia	Central Java: Purwokerto	1
North America	United States	WI: Wauwatosa	1
North America	United States	OH: Maineville	Been

Source: https://www.tripadvisor.com/TravelMap-a_uid.3623711321B1C65855777447C0227BBB

Edit: After telling T.A. I wasn't going to contribute anymore, the same customer service agent (above) who couldn't help me suggested I submit my suggestions on their forum. I told her I've already submitted all the ideas I have and, since they didn't listen the last time, I'm not putting any more effort into it. It's up to her to get management to wake up!

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