We may view the purpose of Master/Parent pages differenly, but I like to place items on the Parent Pages when I want them to appear on the document pages as they are on the Parent pages. If you want to edit them on the document pages, you could override them as Rob has suggested, but if you need to change something that is common to many pages, changing it on the Parent is the easiest, and any changes you have made to overridden Parent items on the document page won't respond to those edits on the Parent page. For example, move an item on a document page, and it will stop responding to movement on the Parent page. The same goes for geometry, fill, stroke, rotation, etc. And if you insert an odd number of pages before an overridden item's page, the parent will be reapplied, and you will have all of the parent items, plus the overridden ones. I like to set it and forget it, but maybe that's just me. If it works for you, use it in good health.
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