Should character sheets always be made public?

So recently a new player joined our DnD group with a new character. (That character also had higher ability scores but that's a separate forum). I also noticed that that character's sheet was private and therefore unviewable. I became worried for a moment that the player was hiding extra feats on the character sheet. (They had said previously that their group used extra feats, and their character was from that group). After getting more of a read on the player, I realised he would never do something like that, but it did get me thinking: Should all character sheets be public to the campaign?

I don’t know about “should,” but I do think it’s kind of weird when people don’t. 
I think it typically has less to do with cheating than folks who have some big reveal like, I’m secretly a changling, or I was actually wizard pretending to be a rogue or something. Which, well I don’t want to get into that as it would be off topic.

But it can also be tables that are trying not to metagame too much. Which, again, I won’t get into.

So I think there can be reasonable, non-cheating explanations for it. While I don’t, generally, agree with those reasons, I’m not going to tell people they’re having fun the wrong way. 

A few reasons for yes.

The game is cooperative, why would there be a secret?

From a story perspective.  The PCs are spending a lot of time together.  Small talk and practicing one's skills.  Things that the PCs would do on an adventure.  But that would be boring and low priority in game as you only have so much time.  Therefore the PCs would see that practice and hear (and participate) in that small talk.  By looking at a fellow PC sheet, you would learn that information at your leisure and not take up valuable game time.

I like public sheets. Like Character77006 said your characters would have time getting to know each other. I also find it helps people to get a better understanding of rules and such. Plus last night, while DMing, visible sheets helped the players to explain rules to each other without me needing to double-check their sheets for wording/etc. So even from that perspective it leads to a smoother game experience.

Public sheets are definitely more useful, like Vitus said. If people can’t see your sheet, they may think you’re cheating or hiding something that you have that you shouldn’t. That being said, everyone has a right to their privacy. The best solution could be to set the default to Public, and have options to change it to Private/Campaign Only. This is just my take, though.

Character sheets should always be made public if you are applying to a forum game. How is the GM going to tell if you followed the rules for their campaign character creation? 

In addition it lets other people applying to the campaign know what has already been presented and they can create something different.

I meta game a lot as I often play healers. It is far more efficient for me to look at how many hp the party has rather than try to keep track of how much damage people have taken. People are also for whatever reason, not always honest when you ask them if they need heals.

It depends because for example I played a campaign where we had a changeling, and I own the Eberron books online so They asked if they could see the content because they were considering some races in it, so I figured out how to share content with them, and I could see their characters race was a changeling which spoiled the later reveal and character development.