Well, there'd be a bigger outcry if it was done for .com, that's for sure. But, they'd certainly point out the precedent in other registries, if they tried to get it in .com.
Most folks don't realize that it was .biz who had tested wildcarding similar to SiteFinder months before VeriSign did it.
http://www.icannwatch.org/article.pl.../05/19/1253205
It's almost like these baby registries are "farm teams" for VeriSign, to test out ideas to see if anyone notices, and then try to do it for .com. Until I spilled the beans (after 3 weeks of back and forth emails with Vint Cerf of ICANN, who, to his credit, finally did give me what I was looking for), hardly anyone noticed the issue -- only like 3 or 4 comments on the comment archive to that point (and most were quoting preliminary stuff I had written on the GA list of ICANN).
It's typical ICANN behaviour to do this sort of thing, not publicize very dramatic changes, until after the fact when it's too late to do anything. The "bottom up, consensus driven process" are simply words to them -- their actions are nearly always top down, dictatorial and by fiat.