Referencing in Academia

I am the kind of person who hates academic referencing, and I have paid the price for it. I don't mean I have paid someone to do my references, but I have been penalized for careless referencing. But, over the past few months, I have realized that referencing is an essential part of academia because not only it is important for one's credibility to cite sources it is also useful for people following in your footsteps. To be honest, a bulk of the academic papers one reads are not that good. But even if they are not, their references lists can be a gold mine. At the risk of sounding condescending, some researchers might not have anything particularly insightful to say, but are good at finding the relevant literature. I don't have that particular skill, so I am envious of  those who do. I have no time for points of style that some academics and some journals are anal about. But, well-referenced articles make it easier for a reader to go back to your sources and draw their inferences from the material if they choose to.