I don't understand how this can be argued to be a point in gnome's favor. Gnome's HIG is only followed by the 5 or 6 core apps that ship with it. The rest of my apps do their own thing (yes, even gtk-based ones).

From my personal perspective as someone who uses both KDE and Gnome daily, both are just windows and a bunch of panels. What gives KDE an edge is that it doesn't try to force its weird conventions on me.