The metronome fader is for, well, the metronome. Its where the audio for the metronome is routed and gives you a fader to grab and quickly adjust its volume.
I don't know what other people use the preview fader for, but I use it when I'm importing audio. With the import audio dialog open, you can play the wav or mp3 files before you import them to verify you're importing the file you want. By routing that to the preview fader I'm able to turn down preview volume which I find is usually super loud otherwise.