I don't know if this is realy the blame of metacity, but I don't know who else
to blame :-)

When I do a galeon -n http://www.gnome.org/ or just gedit --new-document (where
any of those apps are already open on another workspace), the apps are moved to
my current workspace. Well if I wanted the application on that workspace I would
have placed it there to begin with. I suggest to change the workspace to the
applications workspace instead (but I guess that might not be what some other
user expects to happen, like if they plan to do a lot of gedit --new-documents
and then go to the app). 

At least it might be configurable, I think the exisiting "restore on existing
workspace" setting for the window-list might be generalized to "keep the
application on its workspace", and apply to this case too.

I think that in most cases the user really wants to be transported to the
applications workspace, like when klicking on links in evolution. The current
behavour might be better when the user is typing in a terminal and wants to
continue doing that (but in that case I guess the user doen't want anything to
be moved anywhere...)