Great functionality if we do not want customers to see comments which are not related to them (e.g. pure technical comments, code, etc)

Even you have it here!!!

For new versions, see the comment from Martin Winter on Dec 03, 2020 in the link below.

• https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-questions/Hide-quot-Comment-quot-field-on-transition-screens/qaq-p/432965

In case it helps anyone I have a plugin (Comment Security Default) (a paid for plugin) which allows you to restrict who can change the security level on a comment (Instructions).  When configured the security level is shown but the user has no way to change it unless they are in the specified user group(s).  The plugin also allows you to set default security levels and optionally color the comment fields to highlight when the security is set to "Viewable to all users" or others (only when editing).

To configure you need to enable the defaulting at the top of the configuration screen (but you don't need to set any defaults) and then specify user groups (at the bottom). This can be specified globally or for each project

If you need any help or have feature requests then contact me at paul (at) redmoon-software.com

Having View Comments be an additional permission in the project structure would be ideal especially as we use Jira for a lot of non-IT process management.

any progress on this issue?

All I need is another function here in the "Comments Permissions" section, titled "View Comments":

Then, I would limit this down so that my client cannot see the developers' comments on a ticket. Pretty please?

This feature is very useful when using JIRA Service Desk dedicated to customers. JIRA Service Desk is too restrictive (no way to show some of the comments), unless I am mistaken.

I have a question:
Using JS will only help to set a comment's security level when manually adding a comment on the ticket. What about comments which are automatically added, e.g. by mail handlers?

The old hacks don't work in JIRA 5 because it introduces the "quick edit" popup screens and uses new div names.

After way more fscking about than I should have to do, I've figured out how to do this for JIRA 5.1.4.

Add this to your announcement banner:

<script> (function($){ JIRA.bind(JIRA.Events.NEW_CONTENT_ADDED, function (e, context)

); })(AJS.$); </script>

And then add this if you don't have an announcement (ie. hide the banner itself):

<style> .alertHeader

</style>

Apologies for the single-line density but the comment field wouldn't let me use a nicer format.

Hope this helps someone else.

This affects JIRA version 5.1.4 as well. I am evaluating JIRA for an internal bug-tracker and one of our key drivers is open-ness and transparency in our projects, so there is no reason for our users to control comment visibility. This button:

1. Adds unnecessary clutter to the UI
2. Potentially confuses users, leading to comments not being visible when they should be
3. Encourages secrecy which conflicts with an environment trying to be more open.

We are happy for the default, "Visible to All" to apply whenever the button is hidden.

What can we do to accomplish this with JIRA 5.1?

This is very useful when using jira for customer level support. I'm surprised more people haven't voted on this.

Would be useful for us too.
Essentially, we only use this when we want to privately debate a feature or support request. However, users tend to set it too, not realizing that the issue security scheme already takes care of this for them. It actually confuses them more; by seeing this possibility, they're led to thinking that their private support issue might be public. ... and usually, they'll choose the wrong group anyhow. It recently led to issues where members of the support group were actually not seeing all comments left on an issue.

Though not necessarily covering all bases, one possible solution if you simply want to hide the field is to use another javascript hack, similar to http://confluence.atlassian.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=163339. This has only been tested under Firefox 2+ and IE7, so I make no guarantees it will keep working

Basically, you add the following script into the "Announcement Banner" HTML field in the Options & Settings section of the Administration area:

Edit: The page gets cranky if I try and put single "{" in. So I have put in "{{" instead. Please note that this is still perfectly valid JavaScript

// Standard html version for pasting in directly
<script language="JavaScript">
<!--
// Derived from http://confluence.atlassian.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=163339
window.onload = function()
{
var commentLevelFieldArea = document.getElementById("commentLevelFieldArea");
if (commentLevelFieldArea)
{{
commentLevelFieldArea.style.display = 'none';
}}
}
//-->
</script>

<style>
/* Updated to alert box that is then displayed */
.alertHeader {display: none}
</style>

I too would like this feature. Perhaps a "Set Comment Visibility" option in the permission scheme?

Further, we REALLY would like this function controlled in the admin console-- so that we can turn off the "Comment viewable by" function altogether. In our collaborative development communities at Chordiant, we require everything about an issue to be transparent to all members/users. It is uncomfortable that we had to modify the velocity template to affect this change, meaning that we have to remember to re-modify every time we redeploy or upgrade.

I would like to see this feature implemented. In my installation, it would be helpful if certain project roles were not able to change comment visibility (eg. Customers).

Currently managing this by modifying the edit-comment template.