The default template for creating a bibliography needs to be changed to a
sensible style, so that it can be used in an academic context as shipped and
without major reconfigurations.

Example: 

The default way of representing any entry in the bibliography is as follows:

Short name: Author, Title, Year

I know of no academic discipline that would accept this way of citing eg. a
journal article or a contribution to an edited book, be it in a thesis or a
student paper. I guess it is a programmer's default for testing purposes, but
one that is of little use for the end user.

While there is a considerable variety (and orthodoxy) in citation styles, and an
OOo sub-project eventually providing the ultimate tool, a sensible default
setting would allow users to start working with the bibliography without
spending a lot of time trying to understand and set up this complex mechanism,
and would even make things easier for those who want to customise it to their
own liking.

As this should be a minor amount of work (I'd be willing to provide a template,
and so are others from the OOoBib project - how about offering several styles to
choose from?) that would make a big difference especially for newbies and less
computer literate people, I suggest to include this change as soon as possible,
for OOo 2.0 if not for 1.1.x

After all, OOo does provide sensible defaults for headings or table-of-contents
as well...