Asterisk style lists (ie, * item) are preferred over other list styles because asterisks are most likely to be read out by screen readers. For example, given the following Markdown:

Fruits:

* Apple
* Banana
* Pear

VoiceOver on my machine reads:

Fruits {pause} star apple star banana star pear

Whereas with the following Markdown:

Fruits:

- Apple
- Banana
- Pear

VoiceOver reads:

Fruits {pause} apple {pause} banana {pause} pear

This makes it much less obvious that what is being read is actually a list.

The current configuration enables the ul-style rule, but by default this rule has the style parameter set to consistent. This ensures that the list style is consistent across the whole file, based on the first encountered list item. What we really want is asterisk, which ensures that the list delimiter is always the * character.