Talk:Kensington Palace Gardens

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Can one walk on this street? There seem to be security checkpoints on both sides... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.205.221.216 (talk • contribs) 14:15, 15 February 2013‎

There are little security posts at either end, but yes, one can walk along it. Jheald (talk) 09:11, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Further reported residents

• Roman Abramovich. Reported to have bought a property for £90 million (August 2011), which appears to be number 17. [1][2].
• Tamara Ecclestone. Reported to have bought a property for £45 million (2011), and to have spent a further £20 million on it.Jheald (talk) 09:11, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
  • It's 8 Palace Green. See photo 2 from this slideshow from the Wall Street Journal. [3]. Planning applications are in the name of 8 Palace Green Ltd, the registered company address of which is 6 Prince's Gate, London SW7; which is also the registered address of Formula One Management Ltd, and various other Ecclestone companies. Jheald (talk) 10:09, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

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Notable residents

It appears that over the past few days, there has been some back and forth removing and reinstating of notable residents. Today this has culminated in Richwales removing the entire section, and making all versions back to March 2005 (using Wikipedia:Revision deletion) only visible to admins, with the edit summary, "removed unsourced list of alleged former residents per WP:BLP; even if substantiated by reliable sources, this material may still not be appropriate per WP:BLPPRIVACY)"

WP:BLPPRIVACY includes, "If you see personal information such as phone numbers, addresses, account numbers, etc. in a BLP or anywhere on Wikipedia, edit the page to remove it and contact the oversight team so that they can evaluate it and possibly remove it from the page history."

This is perhaps London's most famous residential street, and has been widely written about in reliable sources. Several of the properties are ambassadorial residences, and I can see no good reason not to at least include that information (cited with reliable sources, of course). After all, it is clearly visible on brass plaques on the gateposts and/or houses themselves. As for the other notable living people who own property there, and whose ownership has been written about in reliable sources, would it not be possible to include them in this article, but without identifying where in the street they might live?

Many long dead notable people have lived in the street, such as Samuel Montagu, 1st Baron Swaythling (died 1911), Stuart Rendel, 1st Baron Rendel (died 1913), and this indiscriminate action may have removed this content, even though it remains in their articles, as it does for many of the BLPs who have property there. Surely we can include mention of notable dead residents in the article?

Not being an admin, I'm unable to determine precisely who/what was included in this section, but this blanket deletion seems rather indiscriminate. Edwardx (talk) 19:41, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Agree, clearly we only need to worry about the living, and only then if the information is highly specific and not already widely available in the public domain. Philafrenzy (talk) 19:53, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

There were, in fact, two separate issues here — the most recent revision (with the visible edit summary quoted above), and about 340 prior revisions stretching back to 2005 (with the edit summaries removed).

The most recent revision mentioned four alleged prior owners/residents of 18 Kensington Palace Gardens, but without citing sources. Even if reliable sources were included, this list of (still-living) prior owners/residents is IMO suspect per WP:BLPPRIVACY, but this question can certainly be discussed at greater length if someone wants to re-add the material with sources. Please note that the mere fact that the street is very noteworthy does not necessarily mean that everyone who lives or has ever lived there also merits mention tying them to a specific address in the street; WP:BLP in general, and WP:BLPPRIVACY in particular, may still apply.

The 340 earlier revisions are, IMO, a different matter. This material comprised a detailed directory showing "current occupants" with addresses (house numbers). It contained a mix of official residences (e.g., embassies and consulates) and individuals. Here is a partial (and partially censored) quotation from the deleted material, to give everyone an idea of what was there and how it was organized.

Current occupiers and residents include:

East side of Kensington Palace Gardens

• 1–3 — Demolished. Now a coach park on Bayswater Road.
• 4–5 — Embassy of Russia — consular department
• 6–7 — Embassy of Russia — chancery 51°30′25.49″N 0°11′26.71″W
• 8 — Block of 4 private apartments built in 1961–4, each on two floors. Past residents include [name deleted] (Flat 3, 1996–2007) and reportedly [name deleted] as a child.

The deleted material went on to list both official and personal tenants in house-number order, for East side of Kensington Palace Gardens, West side of Kensington Palace Gardens, and Palace Green. Basically, a street directory. If it had contained only official occupants (such as embassies and consulates), properly sourced, it would probably have been OK, but the inclusion of living individuals (some sourced, some not) crossed a line. Even though essentially all these people were notable enough to merit their own Wikipedia articles, WP:BLPPRIVACY still comes into play.

The only way to clean up this page was to "suppress" (or censor, also called Oversight) essentially all the revisions of the article, going back to when the street directory was first added in mid-2005. These revisions are currently inaccessible to almost everyone — even most administrators can't see them — only the 50 current "oversighters" (including yours truly) have this ability, and we are under strict requirements to do this sort of thing only "within strict limits to protect privacy, remove defamatory material, and sometimes to remove serious copyright violations".

If absolutely necessary, an "oversighter" suppression action can be undone and the material restored to public view. This would normally happen, though, only after discussion amongst the "oversighters", or in response to a complaint made to the Arbitration Committee. A better thing to do in this particular case, I believe, might be to reconstruct a partial list of current official uses of properties, generally without including living individuals, and not organized in such a way as to tempt people to fill out the list with each and every resident together with their street address / house number.

I had not, in fact, intended to completely censor the most recent revision — this happened because the second-last revision was one of the 340 which contained the detailed street directory, so it became impossible to show a diff containing the short, unsourced list of prior owners/residents of #18. If someone is prepared to supply sources for these people and offer a good explanation as to why WP:BLPPRIVACY and other policies do not apply, I'm definitely willing to dredge up this one piece of material for this specific purpose. — Richwales (no relation to Jimbo) 03:06, 8 March 2018 (UTC) 07:01, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

• Thank you, but I think it would have been better to selectively trim it. The old page contents can still be seen in archiving services and it is evident that the majority of the list, specific though it is, relates to embassies who already have their street numbers named on their websites, the dead, notable people who once lived there, and people whose purchases have been widely reported in the press. Bear in mind that the British property press love to report on such things and often it is at the request of the owner with a glossy interior photoshoot for the property sections of newspapers and magazines. In addition, anyone in the UK can use the Land Registry to find out the legal owner of a property. I think you should reinstate it using your judgement to remove those who appear to be living.

e.g. Article stated "15 — XXXXXX XXXXXX (Double plot) Building completed in 1855 and first occupied by the Victorian merchant and philanthropist George Moore who moved in with his first wife Eliza Moore née Ray in 1856."

Just remove the current owner. We shouldn't worry about people from the 1850s.

Another read "18–19 — XXXXXX XXXXXX. Purchased in 2004 for £67 million (US$128 million)—made it the world's most expensive house at the time.[21] Previous occupants: Baron de Reuter, founder of the news agency in the 1850s; John Leech, Punch artist; The de Rothschild family (early 1900s); The Free Poles (1939–45); David Khalili, art dealer(1995–2001); Bernie Ecclestone, Formula 1 chief (2001–2004).

We don't need to worry about where living people like Bernie Ecclestone used to live.

Please reconsider the compete blanking. Philafrenzy (talk) 08:38, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

The approach suggested by Philafrenzy seems reasonable. I am running a Women's Day editathon today, so will look at this again this evening. Edwardx (talk) 09:33, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

I would add that where residents are state actors like the Sultan of Brunei, restricting that information makes about as much sense as censoring the ownership of Balmoral.

The street is no ordinary street. It has police sentry-boxes at both ends, the whole place is covered by CCTV, and there are Diplomatic Protection police on patrol with machine guns. Where somebody's residence there has been widely reported, because of eg their plan to excavate out a 5-storey basement, I don't see very much harm in our covering that. Jheald (talk) 15:37, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

(Commenting as one of the people who removed the content per WP:BLPPRIVACY issues). Privacy issues aside, I do not see any justification in including a property-by-property resident list. Wikipedia is not the White Pages. The article is not about the residents but the street and the properties on it. IMO it would be quite reasonable - expected, even - to list the embassies and it would make sense to list some especially notable past residents because that gives an idea of the kind of neighbourhood it is. Maybe this could be achieved by listing those commemorated by Blue plaques? Royal Crescent Bath is another famous residential street and its article has a "notable residents" section which looks to me like a good example. Dorsetonian (talk) 10:23, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

Responding to Philafrenzy's request to "reconsider the complete blanking": Since every intervening revision contained a mix of acceptable and unacceptable material, it was technically impossible to suppress only the bad stuff. Any given revision of an article can only be either visible (in full) or suppressed (in full). In order for the article to include a partial list containing only some notable properties/residents (along the lines proposed by Dorsetonian), a fresh reconstruction of such a partial list (from scratch) is the only way to do it. — Richwales (no relation to Jimbo) 06:33, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Very well, I assume however that there is no objection to selectively adding the material back as long as it is carefully done? Philafrenzy (talk) 09:03, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

I wouldn't see any objection to doing this — as I said earlier, when I suggested reconstructing a partial list of current official uses of properties, generally without including living individuals, and not organized in such a way as to tempt people to fill out the list with each and every resident together with their street address / house number. — Richwales (no relation to Jimbo) 06:04, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

I think it is inevitably going to be in some sort of list form as "Notable buildings" as it will be unreadable otherwise but it can be carefully done and watched. Philafrenzy (talk) 08:39, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

As someone has started a "Notable residents" with Sir Frederick Wills, 1st Baronet (1838-1909), I will endeavour to pursue a judicious expansion, based largely on the British History Online's The Crown estate in Kensington Palace Gardens: Individual buildings. Everyone mentioned therein is long dead. Edwardx (talk) 11:26, 10 December 2018 (UTC)