Watty62

Watty62

— Charity Trustee —
Name	Ian Watt  FRSA | FInstLM
Country	United Kingdom
Education and employment
Education	MSc Data Science
University	Robert Gordon University

Wikipedia extended confirmed

About Me

Hi! I am Ian. I live in Aberdeen. In 2014 I co-founded Code The City, a Scottish Charity which uses tech and data for civic good. I stood down as a Trustee in November 2025.

Badges at the first Code the City session

I believe that knowledge, information and data should be open. I used to run the monthly Aberdeen Data Meet-ups and the Aberdeen Python User Group; and I co-ran our quarterly hack weekends and the annual Scottish Open Data Unconference.

In 2025 I set up a monthly Aberdeen Wiki Meetup. Since 2019 I've been a WikiMedia UK trainer. I have a blank account IW(WMTraining) which i keep for training others in Wikipedia editing.

In both 2020 and 2021 in received an honourable mention in the UK Wikimedian of the Year awards.

In Autumn 2025 I was elected to the board of Wikimedia UK.

You'll find me mostly on Wiki Data (where I've made almost 119,000 edits) and also Wiki Commons where I've made about 23,000 edits, and uploaded around 6,000 images. About 4,200 of them were sourced from Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums under a public domain licence.

I'm very interested in local history, especially the social and industrial heritage of the North East, and supporting our local cultural institutions and empowering volunteers to work with them.

While I am interested in Wikipedia / Wiki Commons (see my Global Account Info or look deeper with Navel Gazer) I am particularly interested in using Wikidata more effectively. So I am always trying to learn more.

I've worked on several projects at CTC involving Wikimedia Platforms - most are heavily centred on Wikidata rather than Wikipedia. These include:

• Plaques in Aberdeen
• Provosts and Lord Provosts of Aberdeen going back to 1272.
• The Industrial Heritage of Aberdeen
• The Aberdeen Register of Returned Convicts
• Importing data of ~24,000 Scottish nautical and aerial wrecks into Wikidata

Interests

I have many interests, some of which are

• Open data,
• Civic tech,
• Jazz, both listening and playing Saxophone
• Local History,
• Painting, Drawing, Printmaking, and Photography.

Wikipedia Articles Created

• Burgesses of Guild of Aberdeen
• List of Cemeteries and Graveyards in Aberdeen
• Walter Hamböck, Hitler's former pianist, organist at Strichen Parish Church, and musical director of Fraserburgh Musical Society.
• Duncan Hendry
• Dill Katz
• Peter Krykant
• Maitland Mackie CBE
• William Noble (BBC Founder)
• Murder of Brenda Page
• Order of the Scottish Samurai
• William Dove Paterson
• Lenny Popkin
• Thomas Scott Sutherland
• Spectra Festival (co-created)
• Springbank Cemetery, Aberdeen

Articles Substantially Edited

• List of Jazz Contrafacts

References

My sandbox

This user programs in the awesome language of Python.

saxThis user plays the tenor saxophone.

This user prefers black-and-white photography.

This user participates in WikiProject Jazz.

6,000+This user has uploaded over 6,000 images to Wikimedia Commons.

This user posts on Mastodon as
@watty62@mstdn.social.

This user participates in
WikiProject Scotland.
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