• Ideas that have been published in a peer-reviewed journal; or
• Ideas that have become newsworthy: They have been independently by reputable news outlets (such as the cold fusion story).

If you have a great idea that you think should become part of the corpus of knowledge that is Wikipedia, the best approach is to publish your results in a peer-reviewed journal, or reputable news outlet, and then document your work in an appropriately non-partisan manner.

From a mailing list post by Jimbo Wales:

• If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts.
• If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name "prominent" adherents [ed. An article should address the controversy without taking sides].
• If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it doesn't belong in Wikipedia (except perhaps in some ancilliary article), regardless of whether it's true or not, whether you can prove it or not [ed. A polite rational discussion in the Talk page or "votes for deletion" is probably the way to settle this].

One of the keys to writing good encyclopedia articles is to understand that they should refer to claims that have become an accepted part of the public domain. In this sense, Wikipedia is about what is verifiable, not what is true.

A good way to look at this distinction is with the following example. Suppose you are writing a Wikipedia entry on the latest theory -- Theory X -- by physicist Stephen Hawking. Theory X has been published in peer-reviewed journals and is therefore an appropriate subject for a Wikipedia article.

However, in the course of writing the article, you meet Stephen Hawking, and over a beer, he tells you: "Actually, I think Theory X is a load of rubbish."

Even though you've been told by the author himself that Theory X is, in his view, a "load of rubbish," you cannot include this information in your Wikipedia entry. Why not? The answer is that it is not verifiable in a way that would satisfy the Wikipedia readership. The readers don't know who you are. You can't include your telephone number so that every reader can call you directly for confirmation. And even if they did, why should they believe you?

Supposing you were firmly convinced this new information should be published in Wikipedia; and that to fail to do so would be intellectually dishonest. How would you go about getting it into Wikipedia?

For the information to be acceptable to Wikipedia, you would have to contact a news organization -- The Times of London, for the sake of argument -- and explain to them what Stephen Hawking had told you. Perhaps you would have a tape recording of the conversation that you could let them hear. Or perhaps they would agree to interview you and ask Hawking for a response. Whatever they chose to do with the information, the story would go through a process similar to peer review before being published. It would be checked by the reporter; then by the news editor; then by the managing editor or an editorial board, depending on the set-up of the newspaper; possibly by the lawyers; and then possibly by the editor-in-chief).

If The Times published the story, you could then include the information in your Wikipedia entry. However, if you're unable to find anyone to publish it, or you can only secure publication in a news outlet that does not have a good reputation, then the material has no place in Wikipedia even though you know it is true.

The key issue for Wikipedia, then, is the process of peer review, whether in the academic sense, or whether referring to the process by which a story is published by a reputable news outlet or other publisher.

Wikipedia founder, Jimbo Wales, has put it like this:

"The phrase ["original research"] orginated primarily as a practical means to deal with physics cranks, of which of course there are a number on the web. The basic concept is as follows: it can be quite difficult for us to make any valid judgment as to whether a particular thing is true or not. It isn't appropriate for us to try to determine whether someone's novel theory of physics is valid; we aren't really equipped to do that. But what we can do is check whether or not it actually has been published in reputable journals or by reputable publishers. So it's quite convenient to avoid judging the credibility of things by simply sticking to things that have been judged credible by people much better equipped to decide. The exact same principle will hold true for history . . . " (WikiEN-l, December 3, 2004)

"An article that makes no new low-level claims, but nonethless synthesizes work in a non-standard way, is effectively original research that I think we ought not to publish. This comes up most often in history, where there is a tendency by some Wikipedians to produce novel narratives and historical interpretations with citation to primary sources to back up their interpretation of events. Even if their citations are accurate, Wikipedia's poorly equipped to judge whether their particular synthesis of the available information is a reasonable one . . . I think in part this is just a symptom of an unfortunate tendency of disrespect for history as a professional discipline. Some who completely understand why Wikipedia ought not create novel theories of physics by citing the results of experiments and so on and synthesizing them into something new, may fail to see how the same thing applies to history," (WikiEN-l, December 6, 2004).

For theories

1. state the key concepts,
2. state the known and popular ideas and identify general "consensus", making clear which is which, and
3. Individual ideas (e.g. stuff made up) and unstable neologisms should either go to "votes for deletion" [because they "fail the test of confirmability" (not because they are false)], or be edited out.