Clearly labelling the meaning of "In Player's Journals" and "Can Be Edited & Controlled By"

Currently, a character's access is controlled by 2 permissions: " In Player's Journals " and " Can Be Edited & Controlled By ". This is probably the most confusing worded UI feature -- almost every new GM I've seen get it wrong. It's nearly impossible to know exactly what they do without some multi-user trial+error. IMO, the main confusion are due to: Most people, especially new GMs, do not understand what "Journals" mean within Roll20's UI context. The wording "In Player's Journals" is somewhat cryptic, and does not clarify that the it only grants read-only access to the name+bio, and NOT the character sheet . I'd recommend changing the labelling as such: Label the 2 options simply as "Basic Display" and "Full Control" — this is to give these functions simple names for easy communication. More importantly, clearly label the effects of these options; what they do and DON'T do: Basic Display : Show the character in the character list; display the name, picture, and Bio & Info page; does NOT grant access to the content of the character sheet. Full Control : Allow editing and control of the character sheet, token, and Bio & Info of the character; does NOT make the character visible without Basic Display.

I'm not going to spend a point on this because it is fairly minor, but I do agree that the present labeling is confusing. Naming is a little tricky though.  The "In Player's Journals" actually does exactly what it says.  If you don't grant it to the player, even though they could edit the sheet, they can't actually see it in the Journal to select and open it.  It's kind of weird that the second permission doesn't implicity grant the first, but I just tested it with a player account and it definitely does not. Getting across to a new DM that the player needs both, but that "making the sheet visible" doesn't actually make the contents of the "sheet" tab visible is hard to word simply. Perhaps simply fixing the default setting for "In Player's Journals" to be "All Players" would fix this for new/forgetful DMs.  I do like "Full Control" as a name for the second field. I ran into this recently on a new game by an experienced DM, who was in a last-minute rush adding the players (we really needed a session zero) and couldn't remember how to set these up, and after a couple of failed attempts just set "all players" for both.  The resulting session was rather chaotic, with people moving the wrong tokens repeatedly.

The problem with defaulting to "visible" for all new sheets is that it could spoil a lot of NPCs by making them inadvertently visible. The problem with "In Player's Journals" is that, while technically correct, it's not immediately clear to new users what "In" and "Journal" means within Roll20 terminology, and it also doesn't explain the extent of visibility it grants. I think something like "Basic Display" or "View Basic Info" , would be more intuitive, but a clear explanation (either next to the label or as tool tip) would definitely help. Lastly, while you may consider it "fairly minor", I think this is precisely why it should be prioritised; it's a low hanging fruit that improves new user usability significantly.

Ken S. said: It's kind of weird that the second permission doesn't implicity grant the first, but I just tested it with a player account and it definitely does not. It is useful if you ever create any "macro mule" type sheets.  Players will be using macros (most likely from a chat menu) that are actually stored on the Attributes & Abilities tab of a character sheet.  They need edit permission to be able to trigger the macro, but don't actually need to access the sheet.  Keeping it hidden makes sure no one alters any of these macros, changes the sheet name (which would cause all the chat menus to stop working), or deletes a macro sheet by accident.

@Kraynic: I hadn't known Edit without visibility could do that. Thanks for the clarification. @Zyriel Y. My comment about "minor" wasn't a knock on the suggestion, just a clarification of why I wasn't voting for it even though I do agree that the current labeling and function is problematic.  And good point on NPCs.  I tend to assume new DMs use pre-made compendium monsters, but some likely don't and that would be a problem.

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