The gnome-metapackage provides the GNOME stack which includes the set of applications you listed. Here is a link to a recent blog post which lists which application are supposed to be part of this stack.
https://blogs.gnome.org/mcatanzaro/2016/09/21/gnome-3-22-core-apps/ If you installed GNOME via this metapackage, then indeed, removing one of these apps will trigger removal of the gnome metapackage and his leaves, i.e. the rest of the stack. If you really want just a subset, then you would have to manually mark the individual applications you want to keep before any attempt of removal, or install GNOME **not** via this metapackage. This should probably be closed as WONTFIX. Cheers, Ghis
