not sure if this has been mentioned elsewhere - but the WMF has a new Chair of the board - Michael Snow.

I think the news is on the mailing list too.

I haven't really interacted all that much with Michael - he's on my radar as being the founder, and long-time editor of 'The Signpost' - and was appointed to the board in Feb of this year (pretty good wiki interview available here).

On a tangential note - as far as I'm aware, this is the only message board currently online suitable for noting / discussing stuff like this? - WR works well for me in 'keeping up' with latest WMF-related goings on - you've become part of the wiki-furniture, I'm afraid! :-)

I'd like to offer my congrat.s to Michael - and I'm interested to hear thougts / feedback on the appointment

Relevant Foundation-l thread can be found here.

my brain just poked me into remembering that Michael might have been involved in the Wikinews / Mormon church issues (from my very unreliable memory, the foundation asked wikinews to remove a link from a story to some documents the church didn't wish to be released publicly?)

I think as part of those discussions it came up that Michael Snow has very strong family connections to the Mormon Church (if memory serves, it was at the very highest level?)

So that's a bit of background, and some recent-ish wiki news (indeed, Wikinews!) involving the new Chair...

I sure didn't see it coming.

We could make jokes about Howard Hughes and his cadre of Koolaide-drinking (literally) Mormon mafia, who were really good at taking orders and insulating him from reality.

But it's not worth it. Snow seems to be an allright guy, who will add rather than subtract from the foundation (unless you take the Kosher view that making the thing more solid, IS a subtraction).

Congrats to Mr. Snow also.

Of course, there's no evidence that the WMF Chair has any real power; all the power is held by Sue and Jimmy. So this is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, as far as I can tell.