src/main/webapp is the default web content folder, but it can be configured using warSourceDirectory within maven-war-plugin http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-war-plugin/war-mojo.html
Right. But what I'm saying is that Eclipse can accept different values via the .settings file, which Maven 2 happens to write to. So from the WTP perspective, it is configurable, but via the project files only ATM.
So we seem to agree on the current state. The question is, do we move forward with a new Eclipse issue report? In the meantime, you could add the preferences screen to tied folks over.
-Dan