If you do a Google search for "Wikipedia amateurs" you will discover that Wikipedia is not supported by bona fide experts in any field. The following is my own experience with regard to Wikipedia's refusal to consider my submittal.
If you log on to Wikipedia "Egyptian pyramid construction" you will find illustrations depicting huge ramps up to the top of the pyramid, supposedly necessary to place the stone blocks. In my web page http://www.fsteiger.com/Pyramid.html I debunk this unworkable theory and show instead how the blocks must have been placed using movable wooden ramps. Wikipedia has twice rejected my web page http://www.fsteiger.com/Pyramid.html for inclusion and has twice rejected placing a link to my web page. Wikipedia's policy in this regard leads to censorship by the uninformed and/or those who want to suppress information contrary to their beliefs. Below is Wikipedia's latest rejection:
From: "Wikipedia information team" Dear Frank, Frank Steiger
[Wikipedia's reply] For more information about Wikipedia's external link guidelines, please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:External_links
If you believe after reading this that your link should be included, you may do so. If it has already been removed and you believe it shouldn't have been, please post on the discussion page of the article so that you and other editors of the article can discuss its inclusion.
Yours sincerely, Chad Horohoe
Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org
Disclaimer: all mail to this address is answered by volunteers, and responses are not to be considered an official statement of the Wikimedia Foundation. For official correspondence, you may contact the site operators at
http://www.wikimediafoundation.org
[I logged on to the above URL. That web page displayed under "information" an e-mail address of info@wikimedia.org. (Not the same as the previous e-mail address above.) I again made the same request to the new e-mail address. Here is Wikipedia's reply:]
I suggest you have it accepted by a scholarly journal of egyptology before putting it up on Wikipedia. In any case, this email address does not handle requests for links. "We" did not delete your link; other users did. Go discuss with them in the appropriate place: the discussion page associated with the article. Note that if you keep reinserting the same link without proper discussion, your site may be entered into the "spam blacklist".
Yours sincerely, David Monniaux
[I have submitted my web page to scholarly journals, with no response. The problem is that scholarly journals all give credence to the bankrupt mud ramp theory, and no one is willing to admit he/she might be wrong. No one, including Wikipedia, has stated any reason to favor the mud ramp theory over the use of movable wooden ramps. What we have here is a case of hubris replacing rational thought.
]
To: "Frank"
Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2007 2:15 PM
Subject: Censoring my submittal
Thank you for your mail. "Frank"
[my request]
I have published on Google in "Egyptian pyramid ramps" (1st page) and "Egyptian pyramid construction" (3rd page) a detailed, scholarly explanation of how the Egyptians used movable ramps to construct the pyramids. Yet my explanation http://www.fsteiger.com/Pyramid.html is not allowed on Wikipedia. Any link to my web site is removed. Wikipedia provides links to a plethora of Egyptian pyramid construction web sites that consist of nothing more than vague speculation. I don't understand why you continue to censor my web site. It provides specific information available from no other source. http://www.fsteiger.com/Pyramid.html is NOT spam. The only thing I am promoting is the dissemination of knowledge.
Wikipedia is a "wiki", which means that everyone can edit pages. The content of Wikipedia pages, including external links, is determined entirely by our volunteers rather than any official editorial team. In general, when at all possible, we prefer to include content in the articles themselves rather than linking to external sites. Links are generally reserved for sites that have significant content beyond the scope of an encyclopedia entry, and should be limited to only a few per article. These are usually official or academic sites; other categories such as forums and personal fan sites are discouraged.