It's not a bad place, really.  It's just a bit easy, I think, for new users to stumble at the threshold with well-intentioned entries that look too much like poorly-intentioned entries that plague the site.  Once an editor has been around a bit they become very impatient with the latter and deal with them very brusquely.  As for you - well, you can do what you want.  Really.  I would *advise* trying something other than adding similar links to a couple dozen websites all at once (even if you aren't affiliated with the site and even if they may be helpful).  Have you been back to MER-C's talk page?  She (he?) has a few small suggestions there.  Starting small is a good idea, making little tweaks and editorial improvements, until you begin to get a sense of what will fly here and what won't.  There are, for better or for worse, a *ton* of guidelines about what kinds of edits are appropriate - things like, maintaining a neutral point of view; not providing original research, not using Wikipedia as a soapbox and so forth.  

 There are also a variety of help resources, including editors who have volunteered to help newcomers by answering questions, etc. - you can get started with the 'help' link in the left-hand column there - here however is a direct link to the 'getting started' page. 

 Look, don't quit.  You will do fine.  You will make a few mistakes but if you proceed with a bit of caution and care, and act as though you're willing to learn (which you are), then people won't bite your head off.  Maybe, find an article that you know something about - not a major article like Exxon, but a smaller one.  Your hometown, your high school, something small but interesting that is near where you live.  *Those* are the articles that are likely to be incomplete, or inaccurate, or not all that well written, where the community will be grateful for any kind of attention to the thing.  Serious and well-intentioned efforts will be appreciated and respected, even if they wind up getting corrected and revised later.  I quite literally started out here by making factual fixes to my high school website, and later expanding articles about 1) a hotel I happened to be staying in in Chicago and 2) a cemetery I happened to bike by with a camera on the way home from work in Washington, DC.  You could also add an article, but it's often a bit too tempting to add something that, while you're very familiar with it, isn't quite notable.  That's why I suggest expanding on one that is already there, but not well formed. 

 Is this helpful?