This is a Wikipediauser page. This is not an encyclopedia article or the talk page for an encyclopedia article. If you find this page on any site other than Wikipedia, you are viewing a mirror site. Be aware that the page may be outdated and that the user whom this page is about may have no personal affiliation with any site other than Wikipedia. The original page is located at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Morgan_Riley.
Feel free to contact about any issues, ideas, edits or areas I may be able to help with. I especially enjoy illustrating pages, improving layout, writing leads and summaries, and in general improving navigation, organization, appearance, and readability.
My favorite subject matters to work on are the history of technology, cultural heritage, architectural history, and my local regional history and geography.
There must be a reason why you came to this userpage: I did something good, did something bad, did something confusing, or you are simply a curious creature. So what sort of editor am I? In short, I fancy myself a jack-of-all-trades (master of few), primarily in the article space.
My rough editing goals are:
Structure: I am a logical person, and try to clean up disorganized and cluttered pages, and making confusing relationships between articles clear. I rewrite leads and bring about a logical, simple, or proper article Layout, make and redo hatnotes, make navboxes, and do categorization where needed. This also applies to several WikiProjects that I am a part of.
Illustration: I am a very visual person, and think that pictures can be used on Wikipedia to quickly and powerfully illustrate concepts. I spend much of my time over at the Wikimedia Commons; finding, sorting, and uploading images (mostly old Public Domain ones (I love wood engravings), though I am handy with a camera at times). I also try to improve article images and their layout when possible.
Counter-recentism: I am a historically–minded person, and so will be spurred on when I see recentism, both within an article, but also the systemic coverage bias more general. By this I do not mean attacking recent events articles as trivial ("anti-recentism"), but countering by trying to bring a historical perspective both within articles and by new articles. Most things have a long and rich history, so I try to dig about to find these and add them. Reading old books or other works on any subject matter will do wonders to shed light on what's still missing here; the "editor's frontier", as it were. In sum, I try to "think fourth-dimensionally".
Still, if I see any other work that needs doing and is fun and within my skill range, I may jump in. Let me know if I may be of service!
Category 2: History of technology: essentially all those other things I had a fascination with as a kid that I have rediscovered: trains and railroading, mining, letterpress printing, infrastructure, etc.
Category 3: Things of local interest to me and my travels. My native Virginia, cities of Richmond and Fredericksburg, as well as elsewhere in the Mid-Atlantic (esp. Philadelphia).
However, having experienced James Burke's Connections as a formative experience as a child, I do tend to jump from one article to another, finding myself in many a new location (wikilinking all the way).
For your excellent work in taking pictures and otherwise finding images for Wikipedia. I particularly liked your shot of the VA Supreme Court. Kubigula(talk) 03:49, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
The Writer's Barnstar
I award this for the great amount of quality work you have done on a wide range of topics. Long may you continue. Apwoolrich (talk) 19:21, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
The Virginia Barnstar
For the considerable amount of assessment work you have done yesterday and today for WP:VIRGINIA, I hereby award you this barnstar. Great work! :) Neutralhomer • Talk • 07:09, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
The Barnstar of Diligence
I have reviewed approximately 45 portals for US states, as well as more than a hundred other portals, and Portal:Virginia is the only one that I have found so far that is actually being maintained. Thank you. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:35, 8 June 2019 (UTC)