I reckon that this is so that the package can take account of, for example, the symlink already existing and pointing somewhere else.
If you are someone who upgrades, removes, installs packages regularly you are quite likely to run into problem with symlinks not pointing to the right places unless the packages are correctly built, i.e. with symlink creation within a post-install script.
Just because I revert from kernel-source-2.6.16 to kernel-source-2.6.15 shouldn't mean that my /usr/src/linux symlink breaks and no longer points to ANY valid kernel source directory, for instance. Post-install scripts can take account of this, archives cannot, especially if uninstalling, downgrading or upgrading the package just removes any filename it sees listed in the archive.
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