Talk:Mosaic theory of the Fourth Amendment

Merger proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The general consensus was that these articles should be merged. However, the different uses of the term "mosaic theory" will have to be carefully spelled out in the resulting article, according to analysis from reliable sources. —Wingedserif (talk) 15:25, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

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I'm proposing to merge Mosaic theory of intelligence gathering and Mosaic theory (Fourth Amendment) into this page. Mosaic theory (litigation) was the longest and seemed most comprehensive of the three and there is significant overlap in what the articles cover. I've left out Mosaic theory (investments) because I assumed this was complex enough as is, although it might be a WP:CONTENTFORK that could be merged later. Please discuss below. (This is my first merger proposal, so please let me know if I've made/make any procedural errors.)

Pinging @Olivmalone, Eamaker, Geo Swan, BrightSource, and Rarewiki7:, since they've contributed non-minor edits to the pages. (Edit: Pinging @Smallbones, Lamro, ReaderofthePack, and Klbrain: for more opinions on the proposed merge. –3/3/2021)

—Wingedserif (talk) 03:30, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

• Note: This article was started two years after Mosaic_theory_of_intelligence_gathering. Is this then the fork? Mosaic_theory_(litigation)#Mosaic_Theory's_national_security_origins implies this is the fork. Geo Swan (talk) 21:13, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

Mosaic_theory_(investments) was started on 2008 August 5‎ Mosaic_theory_of_intelligence_gathering was started on 2012 April 7 Mosaic theory (litigation) was started on 2014 June 25‎ Mosaic_theory_(Fourth_Amendment) was started on 2020 February 13‎

@Geo Swan: Given that the litigation article is (comparatively) longer and more sourced, I thought it made sense for that to be the article to be merged into. —Wingedserif (talk) 22:02, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

• Wingedserif, we are supposed to judge topics by the notability of the underlying topic, not on their current state, so the relative size of the two articles is irrelevant.

The main argument against merging these two articles, on two separate topics, is that they are about SEPARATE TOPICS. Yeah, they are related topics, but that too is irrelevant, since both topics measure up to GNG.

In the 19th century, and the early and mid 20th century, when all documents were still on dead trees, merging articles into larger articles might make sense. But, on a project like the wikipedia, merging related articles makes zero sense.

We should all be doing our best to serve the interests of our readers. Readers are better served by a wikipedia with a relatively larger number of briefer, focussed articles, than by a wikipedia with a relatively smaller number of longer, rambling articles that try to cover multiple articles.

Related articles should be richly linked to one another. This makes it easier for readers to choose which path to knowledge they want to follow. When frankly ill-advised merge proposals succeed we rob our readers of the opportunity to choose their path to knowledge. When related articles are richly linked, a reader gets to choose whether to keep reading in the article they are currently in, or, they can click on the link to the related article.

Why would you rob our readers of this opportunity? Geo Swan (talk) 01:23, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Geo Swan, your comment above stated that Mosaic_theory_of_intelligence_gathering is the "original" article due to age. I simply wanted to explain why I placed the merge request as I did. Clearly I hit a nerve.

First, while your explanation serves browsing readers who don't know what information they need, I was considering readers who do know what they're looking for and simply want information retrieval to find it. For them, leaving these articles as is essentially requires them to read four articles and then parse the slight difference in perspective and content between them. That is a waste of time. Second, I don't actually know what your proposal is. All I get is that you're generally opposed to merges. Would an edited disambiguation page to provide more context be sufficient?

As I see it, all four of these articles refer to the use and theory of combining small pieces of information for law enforcement purposes and criminal justice cases, in the US. I don't think the uses of the term are meaningfully different enough to merit separate articles—that the term is the same also makes it doubtful that there are 4 separate articles that meet GNG. Two, Mosaic theory (litigation) and Mosaic theory (Fourth Amendment), were created with the express purpose of discussing the Fourth Amendment implications of the legal theory. Based on the user pages of User:Eamaker and User:BrightSource, most of the text for Mosaic theory (Fourth Amendment) and Mosaic theory (investments) were for WP:Student assignments—I doubt their separation was a deliberate choice.

I believe the three articles I mentioned above should be merged. Given how short all the articles are and the significant overlap in their content, the resulting article would not be long or unwieldy. —Wingedserif (talk) 14:43, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Wingedserif, I am going to reply as if you numbered your points.

1. Okay
2. You write "...leaving these articles as is essentially requires them to read four articles..." Really? How do you figure that.
   1. Our readers are not our students. They read what makes sense, for them. Our readers rarely read whole articles. The longer the article is the more likely they are going to skip right to the subsection that seems most likely to serve their needs. So, no, I challenge your reply that not merging would force a reader who knows what they want to read four WHOLE articles.
   2. Why should a reader who does know "what they're looking for and simply want information retrieval to find it..." have to look at any of the other three articles?
3. I am not opposed to ALL merges. I support merging pairs of articles when they are both about a single topic, and I support merging pairs of closely related articles, on separate topics, when, after thorough compliance with WP:BEFORE, there is agreement one of the topics is not notable enough for a standalone article, only notable enough to merit coverage in a section of another article. The Mosaic theory of intelligence gathering, is a separate topic, one that satisfies GNG, and it would be a disservice to readers to merge it into another articl
4. You wrote: "...all four of these articles refer to the use and theory of combining small pieces of information for law enforcement purposes and criminal justice cases..."

   Bzzzt! Do you know the difference between the rule of law and extrajudicial action?

   The Bush administration's policy was to hold individuals in extrajudicial detention. They acted as if an all-powerful President could order any action, so long as he claimed doing so was justified by the President's interpretation of National Security. Individuals held in Guantanamo weren't held there "for law enforcement purposes". Do you know how you can tell they weren't held for "for law enforcement purposes"? Only one of them, Ahmed Ghailani, ever faced charges in the US Justice system.

   No one likes to see obviously guilty people escape conviction due to a legal technicality. However, for the individuals held in Guantanamo, the legal technicality is that almost all of them were actually innocent of any crime.

   So, why were they held? Why were they subjected to years of torture and other abusive interrogation techniques?

   They were held due to the Mosaic_theory_of_intelligence_gathering. As followed by the Bush administration, the Mosaic theory of intelligence gathering justified brutally interrogating, and even torturing, innocent men, who might have been the hapless neighbor of a suspected terrorist. Men were tortured in Guantanamo when they were believed to have stayed in guest houses where suspected terrorists had also been guests. Bush administration torture apologists claimed the President had the authority to order torture, even of innocent men, if torture might help stimulate their memory of what seemed to them to be inconsequential details of their brush with individuals they actually suspected.

   Note: I am not suggesting that you are someone whose edits are consciously motivated to push a torture apology point of view. But your merge suggestion of Mosaic theory of intelligence gathering seems to have been made without reading the article carefully enough to know what it was really about.

5. Two of the articles were created by students, working on an assignment? And you argue that means they should be merged, because you "doubt their separation was a deliberate choice". You may be correct that this could require a closer examination. But your bare assertion that it obviously requires a merge falls short. Geo Swan (talk) 19:14, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

• All I've got from this is that you vigorously want to see Mosaic theory of intelligence gathering maintained as a separate article. I don't appreciate the assumptions of incompetence. If you could be more polite, this conversation would be more constructive.

I disagree with your hyper-specific interpretation of "mosaic theory". One of the sources cited in mosaic theory of intelligence gathering defines "mosaic theory" (no "of intelligence gathering") solely as "the idea that even apparently innocuous information could be harmful if pieced together by a knowledgeable observer."(link) The article goes on to explain that "mosaic theory" is used extensively in making government arguments in court cases to maintain secrecy. The coverage about Guantánamo in the article's sources also refer to the use of "mosaic theory" in court and in judicial decisions.(link) The "mosaic theory" is not an internal description for the US intelligence community; it is how they justify their actions to US courts.

For the other articles, you just say that you don't believe me. OK. It still stands that Mosaic theory (Fourth Amendment) and Mosaic theory (litigation) both refer specifically to Fourth Amendment arguments using the term in US courts. The litigation page explicitly opens with the phrase "The Mosaic Theory of the Fourth Amendment" and, as I've said, has significant overlap with the Fourth Amendment page.

However, since it seems unlikely that we'll convince each other, it might be best to ask for a WP:Third opinion or another form of dispute resolution. What do you think? —Wingedserif (talk) 21:48, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

I'd like to slightly edit my opinion. I went through legal sources looking for articles that link the national security use of the term and the 4th Amendment protection use of the term, and they don't exist. (Other than a few references to its national security origins.) 4th Amendment mosaic theory is new, so maybe we just need to wait 10 years for academic research to catch up ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I'd like to think a single article could include those two uses, but I'm not sure now. —Wingedserif (talk) 21:15, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

• So definitely agreed that there should be a merger here. It's nuts that we have all of these pages on essentially the same topic. As to what page should be the base page, I personally think Mosaic theory (Fourth Amendment) is the best candidate as it seems the most developed to me, but Mosaic theory (litigation) is also not bad. Also, Geo Swan, I would remind you to be civil in this discussion. DocFreeman24 (talk) 08:00, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

• Merge all. This is clearly a case of (probably accidental) WP:POVFORK, with three persons or sets of people writing about the same topic from slightly different perspectives and terms.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:25, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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