desktop:, computer:, network: (+ more?) have legitimate reasons to use Desktop Entry files in funky ways (example being that the IconView motif and label come from the properties defined in the file), but any folder other than this should just treat the files as normal, with a generic "Desktop Entry" icon and the "blabla.desktop" file name.

I was hacking on my project just now and I created a file called "something.desktop" via Nautilus, edited it and decided I was going to make it into a D-Bus service definition file instead, so I typed my contents and saved, went back to Nautilus and renamed it to "org.example.something.service", symlinked that into my /usr/share/dbus-1/services and spent 5 minutes figuring out why it wasn't working.

It turns out that the contents of the file had been changed to include a [Desktop Entry] section, with "Name=org.example.something.service", whilst the file remained to be addressed "something.desktop".

It seems that Desktop Entry files are voodoo magic when it comes to actually managing files, and it would be very useful for developers if there was at least an option for turning off the special handling for everywhere except the special locations listed above.