Why is an accepted standard not used for bibliographical references?
As author of a number of bibliographical references books, there is no question of lack of awareness of the issues and the various advocated treatments of them. The most offensive, non-standard, approach to references that is used on this site is preceding the surname by the first name whilst retaining the ordering by surname. This practice was initiated when this site was first launched in 1996. This was done to facilitate search engine access to author names, especially when placed in quotation marks. Typically the references are adjusted for any publication in professional journals. The approach may be adjusted when a database-oriented approach is taken to references at some later date. Basically further standardization of references in the 1,500 articles on this site, dating from the 1960s, has not been treated as the highest priority.
