Talk:Evil Genius (novel)

I am an employee of the publisher of the Evil Genius series of books (Evil Genius and Genius Squad) and attempted to add the link to our official blog for the series (http://evilgeniusbooks.blogspot.com), but it was automatically removed. I'm aware of Wikipedia's use nofollow attribute, so I was only intending to add the URL for the sake of completion, which seems to be one of the tenets of Wikipedia.

There appears to be a catch-22 regarding the phrase "Note that such sites should probably not be linked to if they contain information that is in violation of the creators copyright (see Linking to copyrighted works), or they are not written by a recognised, reliable source." versus "Linking to sites that you are involved with is also strongly discouraged (see conflict of interest)."

How can a link referencing copyrighted material (literally everything written on the Internet is copyright the original author by default unless those rights are explicitly revoked, but that's a separate issue) ever be proven to not violate that copyright if the creator of the content cannot add it themselves (that would be "self-promotional") or be given the opportunity to approve the link? Furthermore, what more "recognized, reliable source" is there than the publisher of a book?

http://www.AxisInstitute.org is also an official website for the series, created and operated by the publisher (but not added to Wikipedia by the publisher), yet that link is allowed. I would greatly appreciate a clarification of the distinction between that URL and http://evilgeniusbooks.blogspot.com (aside from matching an arbitrary regex). Blogs are an increasingly accepted authority on many subjects, and I think Wikipedia is misguided to arbitrarily disallow links from a single blog publishing site.

If the policy of Neutral point of view is referenced in disallowing the link I wish to add, I suggest you remove any "Official Website" links from Wikipedia (e.g. Nike, Inc., Wal-Mart, IBM, et al). If it is purely a conflict of interest issue, can a person who is not affiliated with the publisher of the book add the link? How do they get around the regex blocking all blogspot.com blogs? How can the blog be proven "a recognised, reliable source" beyond being an official site of the publisher?

I really do want to play by the rules, but the rules in this case seem at conflict with each other. Any help in deciphering them would be appreciated.

Thank you.


 * I've put in the link, hopefully the bot will pay attention to me adding it. --Golbez (talk) 18:44, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, Golbez! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.208.110.32 (talk) 19:21, 1 April 2008 (UTC)