[answered] Linking to posts on my webpage.

I have many opinions about matters that I have written carefully about in a book (a pdf file) that I have written and in various essays I have written. Naturally, rather than rewrite everything, it is convenient to link to this totally free material on my webpage. Twice, in two different forum sections, these links have been removed. Why? The book really does go to further length about what I was discussing than it would have been desirable for me to do on this forum. Once I was told it was advertising; however, there is nothing sold or even advertised on my website. The only thing there is the book itself and my various other webpages containing ideas I have had. It is very inconvenient and hard for anyone who has written anything (e.g., most people who know what they are talking about) to talk about what they know without referencing what they have written before. None of the other forums I have been to have been so frivolous in this regard. What is really annoying is that this policy is not/was not mentioned in the posting policies for these forums, unless I was looking at the wrong place. A coherent statement of your policy would be appreciated. I would suggest you should only outlaw references to your own webpages if something is being sold or (even this would probably be too stringent) commercially advertised there.

Of course, this policy of banning links to your own websites hampers friendships between forum members, another drawback.