We have various methods to make paragraphs appear as a list:

a) via Stylist in the sidebar, and picking one of the Bullet styles
b1) per menu Styles > Bullet • List Style
b2) per context menu List > Bullet • List Style
c) attaching a list style to the paragraph
 
d) per toolbar clicking the icon
e1) per toolbar expanding the icon and picking one of the items from the "bullet gallery"
e2) per dialog Bullet and Numbering

The first batch of options a), b), and c) apply a "named list style" to the paragraph, which will be consistent across the document. Changing the style modifies all lists (and ordered lists continue the numbering). It will follow the predefined bullet-only design on all level and does not add any a small indentation.

The toolbar option d) adds a list on-the-fly with a larger indentation, and varying glyph depending on the level. Variant e) does it similarly but the list will show only bullets in case of the first item (see bug 166229 for this). Changes to lists done via d) or e) are applied only to the one list.

This is hard to understand for users. To focus on the inconsistency between d) and e) in this ticket the expectation is to behave the same. Meaning to click on the closed toolbar item (or pressing shift + F12) should maybe take the first item of the list. In order to make the workflow flexible I suggest to reorder the items - or to pick the last used. Meaning if a user applies the white bullet from the "bullet gallery" (second item), this should be chosen subsequently on click on the closed widget.