I would prefer to not reformat this HTML list, its harder to read in the source.

The reason its not formatting right is because its invalid HTML.  If you change the list to be a proper list type, the Javadoc formatter will do the right thing:

  * <ul>
  * <li>added files</li>
  * <li>changed files</li>
  * <li>removed files</li>
  * </ul>