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In short "Minimize Access Rigths" refactoring tries to use the most restricted access modifier for fields and methods, most preferrably private, then package, then protected, if possible. The changes are presented in a table with member name, old access modifier, and new access modifier. This refactoring is very useful to rework legacy code, or code which was badly designed being much too flexible to discover the actual responsibilities and collabarations. I was using this refactoring a lot when I was using RefactoIt in the days before NetBeans implemented refactoring and I'm missing it badly.
This old bug may not be relevant anymore. If you can still reproduce it in 8.2 development builds please reopen this issue. Thanks for your cooperation, NetBeans IDE 8.2 Release Boss