SERVE is for individual users. There are hundreds of served off entries
in a typical LISTSERV. If wildcards were accepted, they would have to be
processed sequentially, whereas now they are processed through a hashing
table. The SERVE list is also scanned a lot more often than the the list
posting filters. Allowing wildcards would slow down large LISTSERVs.
Instead you can define a global list filter in 1.8b with the FILTER_ALSO
variable. This supports wildcards of course and is added to the system
default filter.
Eric