Some statistics: today at 16:26h GMT+1
this thread here had 315 "views" via the web interface (plus an unknown number of readers via the RSS feeds).
Mary Beard's 2010-01-28 text which probably was extremely influential in starting reactions to
King's College London's plans to eliminate their chair for palaeography when last visited by me (a few minutes ago) had received some 50 comments (the last one yesterday).
There were several dozen tweets on twitter with the hashtag #savepalaeography. Sever new ones seem to be added (almost) every hour, but #savepalaeography has not (yet) made it into the "trending" topics.
The
facebook group "Stop Philosophy Faculty Cuts at King's College London" at 16:33h GMT+1 had 2556 members, the once dedicated to the threat to palaeography ("Save Paleography At King's London") had a few more: 2577.
I don't know how many
mails opposing the plans to cut the palaeography chair Prof. Trainor has received by now (electronically and/or on paper and/or via fax <and/or via owl post>).
The probably most successful platform for and means of protest against these plans that I know of is the
electronic petition at http://www.petitiononline.com/spkcl10/petition.html , which hasn't been active for a very long time (I learned about it near noon today, almost immediately signed, and am listed there as signatory number 141), and which as of now (16:54h GMT+1) has received 1151 signatures - and quite a number of splendid persons, great scholars, etc. amongst the signatories.
Both facebook (via normal interpersonal relations and via the above mentioned group) and twitter have been used (successfully) as tools to point people to this petition.
Whatsoever the outcome will be: There are several lessons about coalition building in a virtual world and the use of more than just one tool for the dissemination of information and for discussion that can be learned from this. And I myself am still continuing my learning process.
Perhaps in the end we will find out that palaeography at King's was saved by a single letter written in Latin and on parchment in a 21st century imitation of a highly abbreviated early 15th century "gothic" script?