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RE: STANDARDIZED REFERENCES [ Word count: 3.000 | Revised: 2018.6.21 ]
Placing a list of references at the bottom of a sufficiently long text interrupts a smooth reading experience for readers. It forces them to scroll up and down.
I used to think this. But Why not put references as footnote every page?
Several reasons:
(1) Think in terms of object oriented programming. You want A, B, C, ... to be atomic, basically. I mean: you can update A without having to change B, C, D, ... Otherwise if you build a linked structure, your work grows exponentially over time. Not feasible. (Dan Ingalls's great contribution to computer science was this concept.)
(2) Some people find the list useful. Don't care for the post that links to it. A good number of upvotes are because it doubles as a "recommended" list. That's intentional.
(3) I've also found putting the list at the bottom prevents people from clicking the upvote; they move to the next post. My preferences are to cite in a complete manner. But that means 10 to 20 references however.
(4) 1000 words of many of my posts was the references list when placed at the bottom; not ideal.
(5) A very major use case of an immutable archiving system is that you can update your previous publications. My view of Steem is arXiv but semipopular. Not everything that is worth making immutable and timestamping is appropriate to throw on arXiv, BioRxiv, etc, etc. Or under your real name. Like if I want to blog about something political or something with the same account.
Two other comments:
(6) I kind of would like to see everybody to do this: it would make long things so much better to read. Yet it would improve the public image of Steem. Two birds with one stone. It makes clear to those browsing offsite some of what gets discussed or planned to be discussed.
Right now, most of that kind of serious or semipopular content is on Wordpress. E.g., Terry Tao's blog as the most excellent example.
(7) Supposing one posts anything similar to a semipopular paper, which is where I'm going with this, one still puts the same references underneath the post to which they're attached. And they are in a standard format. A bot that just looks for similarity will always flag that post as well.
Chances are one had some of the exact same references in another post. If on a related subject. (Or should one not cite a reference after one already cited it for a different subject in an earlier post? That's actually quite bad. Proper citation and references means proper citation and references, every time.)