Hm, thanks for the answer. But I don’t think this is the point. There are several journals which ask for this kind of format and I reckon that’s enough reason for program desingers to implement this option.
And I hope after appying this format there would be no references left, is this not the purpose of a bibliography-program? Sorry, I might have not understood your question.
I agree that this might look inconsistent for the inner logic of the bibliography, but if you read an article as an editior this makes perfectly sense. If you read the text and Smith 2000b comes before Smith 2000a then the chronology appears to be wrong, this is obviously enough reason for some editors to ask for this kind of format.
Cheers
Christian