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I've just noticed What is the Android Permission “WRITE_GSERVICES” doing? with a long discussion in its comments whether it should have been closed. True, there is a "general list" in What do android application permissions mean? – but I doubt it will ever be complete. We also have a general question on How do I root my Android device? – yet we allow for one question per device.

I'd vote we hold it the same with permissions: One question per permission, where it can be explained with multiple answers. That question then can be linked back to the "general index".

Especially in the example mentioned above, this makes a lot of sense. The permission asked for is not documented at all – and even Ryan mixed "Google Service Map" with "Google Map Service" (i.e. even experienced people get confused on that one). I thus voted to re-open that question – and here I vote to:

Let's permit one (in-depth) question per Permission, and use the general list as "index" – as we do with questions.

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  • I can get behind supporting this. And really the reason I linked it with "Google Maps" had to do with the "READ_GSERVICES" permission, because there is a 'bug' that requires anything that uses the Maps api to request the READ_GSERVICES permission. by the time i saw the error in my ways, the comments had blown out and didn't want to add another comment.
    – Ryan Conrad
    Commented Feb 10, 2015 at 4:00
  • Thanks for the background, Ryan! Didn't think the two would really be related. Is that a "real bug", or intended behavior (requiring READ_GSERVICES for "Google Maps")? // Also thanks for supporting my request! I see the Q already has 3 votes to re-open. As soon as that's through, I will place the link (and maybe we should "cleanup the comments"?)
    – Izzy
    Commented Feb 10, 2015 at 9:50
  • As from the upvotes to the question (and Ryans comment) I see some consent here already, I've made my suggestion an answer for you to vote on. Feel free to (downvote and) add a counter-answer if you disagree :)
    – Izzy
    Commented Feb 10, 2015 at 10:07

2 Answers 2

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I don't think this is the same as rooting questions. Each permission gives access to (a) specific thing(s), there's not a potentially long and complicated answer for each one.

We could organize answers better, but I think splitting it up into different questions just makes it harder to find. I'd rather focus on formatting. For example, we could split each "Group" into its own answer.

To address this specific point:

I doubt it will ever be complete

I don't think splitting it up will help completion. If we can't manage the list in one spot, we definitely can't handle it in multiple spots.

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  • I disagree, Matthew. Questions on a single permission can require quite elaborate answers (see just the one on READ_PHONE_STATE). Having all of them in a single "thread" would be everything, but definitely not structured and comprehensible. Think of only 5 such detailed answers as with the example mentioned, all mixed on a single page. How would you be supposed to filter out the ones for the permission you're interested in, without jumping around the page like a squirrel hunting for hazelnuts?
    – Izzy
    Commented Feb 11, 2015 at 9:56
  • @Izzy You search. Having multiple questions doesn't reduce the need for search.
    – Matthew Read Mod
    Commented Feb 11, 2015 at 16:19
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    It does: You check the (alphabetically sorted) index for the permission, and find one or more links next to each other. Following up those links, you find pages which exclusively deal with that one permission. If we have one page to deal with 200+ permissions, some of them having 5+ answers, it's simply a mess.
    – Izzy
    Commented Feb 11, 2015 at 16:21
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As we already do with rooting questions, we will permit "one question per permission", and link to it from What do android application permissions mean? This way we have a double profit:

  1. our "permission index" stays compact
  2. with the time, we might have closer and more detailed information on each permission, easy to find via the links

When we've consensus here, I would point that out in the tag wiki.

We've already started linking specific answers to permissions in the past, as you can see when taking a look at What do android application permissions mean? So I've just run over all questions tagged and completed that for what we already have.

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