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Community Guidelines

Keep it honest, keep it useful, keep it safe. That is most of it. The rest of this page exists so you know exactly where the lines are before you write something, rather than afterwards.

A bad review is a good review

• Negative reviews are welcome. The disappointing parts are the useful parts. If it was overpriced, filthy, or nothing like the photographs, say so.
• Strong criticism is allowed. "I would not go back and here is why" is exactly what this site is for.
• We do not remove a review for being critical. Nothing in our moderation reads a rating. A one-star review and a five-star review are held to the same rules and no others.
• Reporting is not deleting. A report tells a person to look. It does not hide anything, and no number of reports hides anything — there is no threshold, because a review that enough people dislike is not the same as a review that breaks a rule.
• Nobody can pay to change any of this. A business cannot buy a rating, a position, or the removal of a review. We have not built a way, and we are not going to.
• Disagreeing is fine. Two travelers can have opposite experiences of the same hotel and both be telling the truth.

What we do remove

None of these is about the opinion. All of them are about the conduct.

• Made-up experiences. Reviewing somewhere you did not go, whatever you say about it.
• Undisclosed conflicts of interest. Reviewing your own business, a competitor, your employer, or anywhere you were paid or comped to write about without saying so.
• Spam and promotion. Advertising, affiliate links, repetition, and posting the same thing across many places.
• Harassment, hate speech, threats and discrimination. Aimed at anyone: another traveler, a member of staff, or an owner.
• Somebody's private information. Names of staff who are not public figures, home addresses, phone numbers, photographs of people who did not agree to be photographed, or anyone's precise or real-time location.
• Content that is not about the place. Political arguments, personal disputes, and complaints about a delivery company that has nothing to do with the restaurant.
• Sexual, adult or hookup content. This is not a dating platform.
• Anything illegal or unsafe, and anything involving minors.

How enforcement works

A report goes to a person. They read the content itself, not just the report, and decide. A review can be hidden or removed, and either way it is recorded — what happened, who decided, and what state it was in before. Content is not deleted outright, so a decision can be reversed. Repeated or serious breaches can mean a warning, a suspension or a ban, and anything involving safety is escalated immediately. See Meetup Safety.

If you think we got it wrong

Tell us through contact. If a place page has wrong information rather than a review problem, use the correction link on the place page itself.