There are several use cases why you would want to use wildcards, i had a case where i did not use a csv but based my data on a table from another element but the index did not include my entire element name, hence i used the table content and added a wildcard to find the correct element.

The problem indeed with the wildcards in the service template is that it will only search for the first element found, this can lead to the wrong element being included by accident. So i would say, as a generic rule it's indeed best to add the elements via csv as you suggested.