I'm puzzled by how the <nowiki>[#LINK]</nowiki> form would be useful but not.

Consider a sizable documentation page written in the wiki format.  I'd have headers for each section and I'd likely want a ToC at the top for them.  Currently I'd have to do them this way:

<verbatim>
...ToC...
  *  [#SECTION3-3|Section 3.3: The way of the world]
...
...Content...
<h3><a name="SECTION3-3">Section 3.3: The way of the
</verbatim>

To me the header text is obfuscated beyond all recognition.  It would be hard to locate while editing and just generally looks ugly (like HTML in general looks).

With my propose [@LINK] form, the ToC section remains the same (nicely readable) and the header section is changed to:

<verbatim>
3.3: The way of the world]</h3>
</verbatim>

The first benefit I can see is that the contents are parallel in both locations.  It's easy to match the patterns.  The second benefit I can see is that the second is a whole lot easier to read the title text in, making it simpler to locate when scanning quickly.