Why is the Contributor Role set as a Creator?

[PATRICIA MURPHY]

We need to start collaborating with Vendors in specific Jjira projects. I have created a Vendor permission scheme, a Vendor Role, Vendor specific Groups and Company Managed projects.
But because JPD projects are Team Managed I need to have them ALL set to Private, however if I do this and add my "ALL Employees Group" to the project as a contributor JPD wants me to add everyone to the Contributors Group but the Contributor Role is a Creator Role and nothing in the Contributor role that is checked is a Creator action!!

And ALL of the Roles, even the ones that came with JPD have "Clone" in the Role name and say they are "Duplicate" roles.

How did this happen and how can this be fixed?

HELP PLEASE!

[ashu patel]

Problem:
You're seeing that the Contributor role in Jira Product Discovery (JPD) is being treated as a Creator role, meaning it's granted elevated permissions like editing, submitting, or working on ideas—actions typically reserved for Creators. You're trying to create a custom “Contributor Clone” role with limited permissions but are still seeing the CREATOR label on many permissions.

Key Insight from Screenshots:
Jira Product Discovery seems to treat any role that has "creator-like" permissions (such as "Submit an idea", "Create and edit ideas", "Work on ideas") as a Creator role type.

The CREATOR label next to each permission means it’s a creator-level action, not necessarily that the role is a Creator.

You are creating a custom role called "Contributor Clone" but assigning permissions that include actions like “Submit an idea” and “Work on ideas”, which automatically classify the role under the Creator tier.

Why This Happens:
JPD groups users into Viewer, Contributor, and Creator tiers based on the actions they can perform. If a user has permissions such as:

Submitting ideas

Editing ideas

Commenting

Voting

...they are automatically considered Creators by Jira’s logic, because those actions are billable and beyond read-only access.

How to Fix It:
If you want to keep the Contributor role truly limited and not elevate users to Creator-level access (which may affect billing or permissions), you should:

Remove these permissions from the role:

Submit an idea

Create and edit ideas

Work on ideas

Merge, delete, move, or manage delivery

Keep only these for Contributors:

Vote on ideas

Create comments, insights, or attachments (depending on your needs)

But not edit or delete others’ content

If you need to group users but keep strict limits, use a Viewer or very restricted Contributor custom role.

[PATRICIA MURPHY]

The problem is we did not create the contributor role, this is how it came "out of the box".

We haven't cloned or duplicated any roles

[PATRICIA MURPHY]

Without us doing anything the Contributor role is no longer set as a creator.

But clones are still there, I guess I can delete the clones as long as none of our projects used them.

[PATRICIA MURPHY]

Did anyone have the same experience? Is deleting the clones the right thing to do?

Another strange thing happened today.

I just added a new contributor to a different project and on the project access screen they their Role is Contributor but Product Access is Creator.

Under Manage Roles the Contributor does not have the product Access of Creator, clip 2.

[PATRICIA MURPHY]

We need some help/guidance from the JPD team please.

[Lisa McCann]

@PATRICIA MURPHY  https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Jira-Product-Discovery-articles/The-different-types-of-users-creators-contributors-and/ba-p/2378354 I found this in the community discussion forums - hoping this gets you closer to an answer.

[Lisa McCann]

Bumping this question as I'm having problems adding creators at all. 

https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Jira-Product-Discovery-questions/Jira-Product-Discovery-Permissions-Can-t-add-creators/qaq-p/3025308

Cross-post from my question with attachments showing the experience.
@Tanguy Crusson thoughts or suggestions for both of us?

[Tanguy Crusson]

I just came across this thread today. 

@PATRICIA MURPHY I'd suggest reading this to understand what's going on: https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Jira-Product-Discovery-articles/The-different-types-of-users-creators-contributors-and/ba-p/2378354

And this follow-up one for more detailed instructions for how to set that up: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Product-Discovery-articles/Adding-contributors-and-creators-to-a-Jira-Product-Discovery/ba-p/2324017

Basically there's a product role (creator = has a JPD license, contributor = does not have a JPD license)
And it's different to the project role (e.g. you can have a creator license, but be limited to being only a contributor in a specific project)

@Lisa McCann in your case you need to make sure the user you added has product access / a product license. You gave them the project role of "creator", but since they don't have product access (they don't have a license) the system will limit what they can do to contributor actions. 

Basically, 2 things you need to do:

1. make sure users you want as creators have a product license (typically done via admin.atlassian.com by a site administrator
2. then you can decide what project access they get in a project (creator = can edit stuff, contributor = cannot edit other than commenting, adding insights, voting)

If someone is given a "creator" project access, they need a product license (= creator product access), otherwise they'll be limited to contributor actions. 

[Lisa McCann]

This fixed it for me.