At first glance removing the authors page link seems like a backward step, as it is immensely useful to easily jump to the Plugin authors site for support etc. Having to remember to include links manually is going to be a bit of a pain, I'm bound to forget! ;)

But, the general consensus seems to be lets see how the Plugin repo iterates, and I definitely agree. The work being done on the whole is pretty darn good, everyone is doing a great job (and working very hard).