A petition isn't exactly much good unless you're willing to actually discuss the feature and it's good and bad points, you also haven't suggested an implementation, just a shortcut key to get this effect.
What character should it use? What about other clients who won't/can't support this new character? What about clients which already have italics as ASCII character 22 (mIRC interprets this as reverse)? Should mIRC switch from interpreting ASCII 22 as reverse to italics?
None of this has so far been addressed, which it really must be. Getting people to blindly sign a petition means nothing unless these things are at least brought forward as issues.
Obviously you don't have to come up with everything, but if people 'sign' this 'petition' and then 6 months later italics are added by replacing reverse, it won't do much good to complain that that isn't how you wanted it done.
