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_rub1iq

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.