Should Find a Grave be trusted?

[Phoenix]

Ancestry directed me to Find a Grave for one of my ancestors who died in Field Dalling, Norfolk in 1812.

I was fascinated to see that he had a son who was buried in Earlham Cemetery. I didn't recognise the name, because it was someone born in Norwich, whereas my ancestor (and his wife!) spent their days in rural Norfolk.

A contributor has done a one name study and flooded the site with over four thousand entries. It's hard to believe that I've found the only mistake. I begin to wonder how many entries are genuinely from churchyards, and how many scooped up from other records?

[kiterunner]

Find a Grave does have some genuine entries from people who go round cemeteries looking at the graves, making notes and even taking photos, and it can be very useful in those cases, but it does also have a lot of entries which are similar to the old "user submitted" IGI entries that FamilySearch used to have, where people have submitted information from other, more dubious sources. So no, in general I don't trust it.

[Phoenix]

It certainly contains some amazing details, and at least we can check the source of the information, but it is so frustrating that it contains theory as well as fact.

[Jill]

Someone who has ancestors in common with my husband has submitted loads from GRO death registrations therefore just giving the quarter and district as the burial place. I give a little groan each time I see one of hers.

[Glen TK]

It was never intended to be used for family history and has no sources/citations. Whilst a lot of entries are derived from burial registers there's no way to check if edits to information or relationships have been accepted with or without verification or ignored by the manager and thereby auto accepted after 28 days.