I would love to see this fixed, it would tidy up the issue view and open up the option to use more fields, instead of having to restrict them so much, because they're cluttering up the agents page for no reason other than to let you know they're 'Empty'.
As c06e10e46ade said, this seems like a feature that doesn't work or a bug, rather than a need to add a new feature. Hide when empty surely should not default to putting fields into the side bar when not empty. I think it should put them into the 'hidden fields' side bar when empty, and then when filled, they are placed in a position we would like.
+1