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I agree with you on that.

What about * for bold, / for italic and _ for underline?

/ is too commonly used, such as when making a list of replacements/alternatives/synonyms. It works fine when it's just the text as written, but if it was parsing and turned that list to replacementsalternativessynonyms, it would only be getting in the way.

You shouldn't parse '/' in foo/bar/baz or in foo / bar / baz.

If people want to make foo or foo bar italic, they write /foo/ and /foo bar/.

True.

Perhaps //italic text// would be acceptable.

// is common in URIs.

HN uses *italics*.

I, myself, prefer /italics/, _underline_ and _bold_ in text, if there is no formatting. I feel that these 2 are the least arbitrary, they almost work without agreeing on their meaning beforehand.

I have no regrets on this one. I thought people would use both, and people do use both.