Confluence currently keeps only a single version of all of the textual configurations such as templates, layouts, user macros etc. This is very dangerous because if the user accidentally corrupts one out they have no easy way to get it back. Periodically a paniced email is sent to the Confluence mailing list asking how these files can be recovered. They can go through the backup/restore process but that is pretty painful and can take a while. It also doesn't help if a number of changes were made since the last backup.

To get around this we have instituted a policy of checking all such files into a separate source control system. Any files that need to be changed are checked out, modified and submitted to Confluence. Once they work the new version is checked back into source control. This process is tolerable, but it is a big overhead for such a simple feature.

It would be vastly preferable if Confluence treated these pieces of text as content just like pages, news etc. They could be versioned, you could see who edited them, you could see the diffs between versions etc. Since Confluence already has a powerful versioning system it seems like a no-brainer to use it for all the other pieces of content that are floating around.