The Jenkins plugin annotates the Targets text box as follows:

    "Whitespace separated list of accounts to send notifications to
    (like 'peter@myjabberserver.org') -- for group chats, prepend a '*'
    (e.g.  '*commitroom@conference.myjabberserver.org') -- note that
    JIDs that contain '@conference.' are automatically recognized as
    group chats (no need to prepend '*')"

This patch makes publishJabber behave as documented above.