I also found this curious, from the other thread. From posts there, it does seem to make some difference whether you're linking to an article that has clear use to the project, a userpage that might be a bit more ambiguous, or a jokish "homepage" for a group of users hosted in userspace. Not sure if that settles the issue entirely, on its own, but it seems to be a useful distinction.
Issues of page ownership are also potentially at hand. That's probably related to the above, though.
Not the most useful post, but maybe jump-starts discussion. ;)
-Luna