Bibliographical standards are conventions made by and for publishers. Most of the informations that appear in lists of references are useless and cumbersome. Simple guidelines can help emphasize the work's source over publishers' interest.
Some informations are useless to the intellectual worker. There is no need to mention volumes : the year suffices. The town of publication may have been of some use when we were writing letters to publishers. Names of the book collection are marketing scams. ISSN and ISBN are for librarians.
Quotations should refer to the numbers of the parts of the logical structure. Material pages do not matter anymore in a virtual environment. Citing the title of the section or the chapter used gives a more honest picture of the work done. Whenever possible, adding the original title and the original publication date, between brackets, puts text first.
There are easy ways to show respect towards the ones that worked on the text. Always mentioning everyone : the translator, the editor, the compiler, the commentator, etc. Never abreviating their first names. Always using an order that list them before the information about the publication.
Bibliographic informations shall be useful for the one who maintains them. At the very least, the publishers should maintain the information they need all by themselves. Writers should free themselves from publishers' agenda by promoting their information needs.
A bibliographic standard that is portable, informative and elegant should not be too difficult to create.
