The reference list's a ........

I'm marking work at home. We're strict on accuracy of reference lists and the university conventions on referencing (basically how you state where you got your information from). I tend to spend two years correcting it on most students' work until they finally get that it's basically copying a template from the copious verbal and printed examples we give them. For some reason it's one of those things that presses internal panic buttons. I try to empathise by recalling that sick feeling I used to get when the maths teacher at school said the word 'algebra' but when you get the 15th script and the same error is there that you know you corrected in previous work and in a draft for this piece the empathy wanes.

Sometimes people forget to put some items into the reference list at the end. All you need in text is the surname and year. If there are multiple authors you use the first surname and the 'et al.' meaning and others. The reader can then look up the details in a single document at the end. Easy. Easy to miss one out though I suppose. However, how this one was missed is beyond me. For me (Fuchs et al. 1997) stands out as it seems to somehow resonate of the average student's attitude to reference lists themselves.

There is a view that as long as you can identify the source that should be OK and that we're too obsessed with such things. it seems to me though that without our insistence on accuracy and conventions we'd lower the actual bar even further and reference lists would look like this:

References

some books
a bloke I met at the bus stop
the Internet

never tell anyone your address

I'm sure a lot of people on this membership list will attest to that. Some of them, bless 'em, are only on it because they made a sneaky £5 donation. It must be worrying to have your e mail address and phone number published like this so close to your stated affiliation. What would worry me if I was a BNP member is that there were people who saw themselves as anti Nazi but were actually a bit deranged themselves. It is possible you know. Who knows what they would do. Or what if someone in the US or Australia happened upon this list and saw how many members of the Griffin family were members (it's about 10% of the entire membership by the look of things) or they got hold of sell out "half wog" (BNP description not mine) Lawrence Rustem's details and gave him a taste of his own odious medicine. People from those countries might feel they were outside UK law and bombard them with mail, phone calls or worse.

I searched the list using Ctrl+f then typing part post codes and specific names to see how many of them live near me. I seem to have an old couple and a married woman near me. Always nice to know who your enemies are I think. In this case, as in a lot of things BNP related, it's a bit embarrassing really. Instead of fighting them I may just go round and criticise their curtains or something appropriate to their age and level of danger.

http://wikileaks.nl/leak/bnp-membership-list.txt