Hi! I am Montanabw, I really do live in Montana and I really do own horses—and they graciously allow me to upload their images into Commons from time to time. On Wikipedia, I've been around for a while, and am glad to assist other editors as I can. In real life, I am a small-town lawyer in private practice, which explains why sometimes I am not around to answer questions quickly and other times seem to live online; my work ebbs and flows. I occasionally will write about legal topics, but in general, I do enough legal writing in my work; I prefer to work on other topics here. I am not compensated for anything I write on Wikipedia. I do some freelance writing elsewhere.
I sometimes can take requests for photos of objects or locations in western and west-central Montana, particularly for National Register of Historic Places listings in Montana. I take random drive-by images when I travel, particularly of county courthouses and other NRHP places of interest. I can also access documents in hardcopy at the Montana Historical Society. I choose not to use my real name on WP, but I've met a number of wikipedians off-wiki. I've helped facilitate some editathons in Montana and I've been to a few WP-related events such as WikiConference North America/USA, so if you've seen me in real life, feel free to pop over to my talkpage and say hello!
Neigh! This is a horse.
A horse (crowd-sourced)
I hereby award Montanabw this Barnstar for so much work on Horse related articles without enough recognition! -- Culnacréann 16 August 2007
This user has been on Wikipedia for 13 years, 11 months and 9 days.
It is approximately 3:59 AM where this user lives.
“The encyclopedia that anyone who understands the norms, socializes him or herself, dodges the impersonal wall of semi-automated rejection and still wants to voluntarily contribute his or her time and energy can edit."—from "The Decline of Wikipedia"
"To me the key thing is getting it right. And if a person's really smart and they're doing fantastic work, I don't care if they're a high school kid or a Harvard professor; it's the work that matters."—Jimbo
"...force tends increasingly to fall into the hands of those who are enemies of civilization. The danger is profound and terrible; it cannot be waved aside with easy optimism. The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."—Bertrand Russell, May 10, 1933
"I want to say to everyone else, get stuffed, because women can do anything and we can beat the world."—Michelle Payne (after her win in the 2015 Melbourne Cup)[1]
Where "my" articles or my photos (mostly photos right now) that I have taken and uploaded on commons have appeared off-wiki (frequently without proper attribution even to Commons, arrgh):
"Having too much fun with userboxes" section[edit]
This editor is a Looshpah Laureate of the Encyclopedia and is entitled to display this Book of All Knowledge with Secret Appendix, Free Errata Sheet, and Author's Signature.
This user has been editing Wikipedia for more than ten years.
