User talk:Balloonman

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Requests for adminship and bureaucratship update

No current discussions. Recent RfAs, recent RfBs: (successful, unsuccessful)

RfA reform

Hi Balloonman. I have now moved the RfA reform and its associated pages to project space. The main page has been updated and streamlined. We now also have a new table on voter profiles. Please take a moment to check in and keep the pages on your watchlist. Regards, Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:02, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

The Poker Award

The Poker Award Award to the Balloonman for his excellent contributions to Poker topics on wikipedia and covering older tournaments which are usually neglected. Keep up the good work!♦ Dr. Blofeld 09:31, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Also the award is for apparently having the balls to confront Jimbo! ♦ Dr. Blofeld 09:33, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

California Balloon Law

Do you think File:Hannah Montana vs. 5000 volts.ogg or File:Hannah Montana vs. 5000 volts (cropped).jpg might be usable in California Balloon Law? --Tothwolf (talk) 17:30, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I think one or both would be great, feel free to add 'em.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 18:25, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I wasn't really sure of the best way to add them. I figured you might have some ideas if they looked suitable for the article though. The video certainly shows what happens when one of these balloons gets in between two phases. In an actual distribution system, the arc in the demonstration would have kicked out the substation breaker feeding that section of distribution line. --Tothwolf (talk) 19:10, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Welcome back to activity

BTW, good of you to take up the toolset again. Jclemens (talk) 21:07, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

It took me months to notice this, but welcome back! Kevin Rutherford (talk) 18:03, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

That RfA Reform Thing

Kudpung has asked me to 'nudge' some people .. as I'm an idle get, I'm just going through the entire Task Force list so my apologies if you didn't need a nudge! You can slap me about over on WP:EfD if you like :o) Straw polling various options: over here - please add views, agree with views, all that usual stuff. Pesky (talk) 12:42, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Signature

I love your signature when it said "NO! I'm Spartacus!". But what on wikipedia does it mean? Is it that you would give up your life for wikipedia? ~~EBE123~~ ^talk_Contribs 18:57, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

[1] – iridescent 19:00, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I changed my name for about 6 months in 2009 to "I'm Spartacus", but it never grew on me, so I changed it back to Balloonman, but left "No I'm Spartacus" as my talk page link as a reference to that name. If I remember correctly, I was involved in some heavily political debates and didn't want it to appear as if I was changing names to create a new account with similar views, so I made it obvious that I'm Spartacus = Balloonman.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 19:15, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

No! I'm Spartacus video. ~~EBE123~~ ^talk_Contribs 22:22, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I just saw that you changed your signature. ~~EBE123~~ ^talk_Contribs 21:51, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Didn't realize that it had been 2 years since I was Spartacus...---Balloonman ^{Poppa Balloon} 00:04, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Your mediating skills are wanted again

Hi. Can you possibly fit into your schedule another dispute mediation? The discussion is at Talk:Donald_Trump#Use_of_the_word_.22racism.22 and in the Donald Trump article's recent edit summaries. I will always remember the great job you did at Tea Party movement. Thanks either way. -SusanLesch (talk) 17:08, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I'll try to take a look at it this evening.---Balloonman ^{Poppa Balloon} 21:47, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Would you like to recuse yourself? I was surprised to read your initial feelings about Mr. Trump and I imagine the other side was too! I think you've done a fine job on this mission. But the argument is still taking place and I think perhaps it can move to the BLP noticeboard. Thank you. -SusanLesch (talk) 20:44, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

WP:RFA2011

Task Force news: Recent updates include basic minor changes and condensing at the main page, additional comments on the main page talk page, a new project sub page and talk for Radical Alternatives, and messages at Task force talk. A current priority is to reach suggested criteria/tasks for clerks, and then to establish a local consensus vis-à-vis clerking. Please remember to keep all the project and its talk pages on your watchlist. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:25, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

2007 World Series of Poker Circuit

This is an automated message from CorenSearchBot. I have performed a web search with the contents of 2007 World Series of Poker Circuit, and it appears to include material copied directly from http://news.pokerpages.com/index.php?option=com_simpleblog&task=view&id=2450.

It is possible that the bot is confused and found similarity where none actually exists. If that is the case, you can remove the tag from the article. The article will be reviewed to determine if there are any copyright issues.

If substantial content is duplicated and it is not public domain or available under a compatible license, it will be deleted. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material. You may use such publications as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences. See our copyright policy for further details. (If you own the copyright to the previously published content and wish to donate it, see Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials for the procedure.) CorenSearchBot (talk) 22:35, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

The page was basically copied from an existing WP article... but upon closer review I see nothing in the copied version that would warrant a copy vio tag. I don't see it.---Balloonman ^{Poppa Balloon} 00:11, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure the above was a false positive (happens a lot). Could you add a note though to the talkpage saying which WP article you copied it from, for attribution purposes? Thanks, --BelovedFreak 19:07, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Task force WP:RFA2011 update

Hi. As of 20 June: More stats have been added on candidates and !voter participation. Details have been added about qualifications required on other Wikis for candidates and RfA !voters. Some items such as clerking, !voters, and candidates are nearing proposal stage. A quick page`link template has been added to each page of the project. Please visit those links to get up to speed with recent developments, and chime in with your comments. Thanks for your participation.

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of RfA reform 2011 at 07:56, 20 June 2011 (UTC).

WSOP Bracelet Winners template discussion

As a person who I believe is interested in the Bracelet Winners templates, I feel you might like to leave your input regarding the recent major edit. Feel free to join the discussion here. JaeDyWolf ~ Baka-San (talk) 22:16, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Your input is requested

Greetings!

As a member of the RfA improvement task force, your input is requested at the possible proposals page, which consists of ideas that have not yet been discussed or developed.

Please look though the ideas and leave a comment on the talk page on the proposal(s) you would most like to see go forward. Your feedback will help decide which proposals to put to the community. And, as always, feel free to add new suggestions. Thanks!

Swarm, coordinator, RfA reform 2011

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of RfA reform 2011 at 07:53, 28 June 2011 (UTC).

WP:RFA2011: RfA on other Wikipedias

A detailed table and notes have now been created and posted. It compares how RfA is carried out on major Wikipedias (English, French, German, Italian, Spanish). If you feel that other important language Wikipedias should be added, please let us know. This may however depend on our/your language skills!

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of RfA reform 2011 at 22:46, 3 July 2011 (UTC).

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Thanks for your help with coming up with a hook for the Andrew Pataki article. Here's a link if you want to follow the DYK nomination. — AJDS talk 17:17, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

PokerBabes as a reference

Hi. I would like to remove pokerbabes as a reference on the poker articles. It is a self published, somewhat obscure source, yet is used heavily all across the various poker articles. It is clear somebody had/has an agenda to get this site as much exposure as possible across Wikipedia and that meets my definition of spam and as such I don't think it should be used. I've removed it as a reference from a number of articles, see Joe Hachem, Razz, Omaha Poker, Ron Rose and many others, and I was reverted in each instance and don't want to get in an edit war. Would you support removing this site as a reference? How would you suggest I proceed? Thanks. DegenFarang (talk) 02:46, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Hi Balloonman,
this has escalated quite a bit since DegenFarang left the above message. There's a new discussion at WT:POKER about this, and I believe you're active and quite knowledgeable in that area? I would welcome a neutral voice of reason there.
Cheers, Amalthea 14:36, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

DYK suggestion

Hey DYK guru, you should check out this brand-new article for a DYK: Baunscheidtism <3 --Ginkgo100^talk 04:15, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Ageism essay

I've proposed retitling your ageism essay to allow equal treatment of an opposing essay. If you have any comments please respond there; I'm just commenting here to make sure you're aware of the proposal.--MaxHarmony (talk) 03:27, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Good close

Good close (especially seeing as the user hasn't edited and it's been a week). Thanks for saving us the trouble writing that out =] –xeno^talk 14:20, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I thought about just adding my comments as a comment, but decided that since LC hadn't followed up with a response that we might as well close it. If LC had continued to be active during the discussion or participated in the discussion, it would have been a different story---but with the continued absense, I have to question if it was legit.---Balloonman ^{Poppa Balloon} 14:36, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

RfA Reform update

Hi. It's been a little while since the last message on RfA reform, and there's been a fair amount of slow but steady progress. However, there is currently a flurry of activity due to some conversations on Jimbo's talk page.

I think we're very close to putting an idea or two forward before the community and there are at least two newer ones in the pipeline. So if you have a moment:

• Have a look at the min requirement proposal and familiarise yourself with the statistics, I'd appreciate comment on where we should put the bar.
• Any final comments would be appreciated on the clerks proposal.
• Feedback on the two newer proposals - Pre-RfA & Wikipedia:RfA reform 2011/Sysop on request. Both are more radical reforms of RfA and might run along side the current system.

Thanks for reading and for any comments that you've now made.

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of RfA reform 2011 at 21:37, 6 September 2011 (UTC).

Third culture kid

Hi there Balloonman,

How are you? Just wanted to let you know that Ruth E. Van Reken (herself!) and I both right now trying to improve the TCK article (we are in touch via email & Skype, I set up her user page for her because she didn't know how to use wikipedia at all). (I'm a CCK and TCK but not military.) I see you've done a lot of work on the article so I wanted to keep you in the loop. It would be great if, as you mentioned back in 2006 on the talk page, we could bring it up to FA or even anything better than "unassessed" :) (I aim low!)
At the moment I'm just trying to move all the references into inline citations so that the 'further reading' material (which I assume is in 'references' now) can be separated. But there's less boring stuff to be done, e.g. it would be great to get some images in there somehow. Anyway, I hope to hear from you.

Kind regards,
 TyrS  chatties  13:08, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue LXVI, August 2011

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; medal recipients; contest results Articles: The month's featured and A-class Milhist content Book reviews: Nick-D looks at Carthage and Australia in Palestine Op-ed: Remembering 9/11

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Wow

I won't take offense at your 'wow', though it's kind of rude, but yes indeed, I am an admin, thank you very much. In your sarcastic haste, you managed to miss my point entirely: Arthur Rubin's claim of "involvement" was simply a ruse, given that the "involvement" in question was so undefined that I don't believe it. Drmies (talk) 16:23, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

In that case, yes, I missed it and I do apologize. I thought you were being sincere in that you felt that he should act now.---Balloonman ^{Poppa Balloon} 18:16, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Gotcha. Thanks for clarifying; my apologies if I wasn't clear. Drmies (talk) 19:02, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

News and progress from RfA reform 2011

RfA reform: ...and what you can do now.

(You are receiving this message because you are either a task force member, or you have contributed to recent discussions on any of these pages.) The number of nominations continues to nosedive seriously, according to these monthly figures. We know why this is, and if the trend continues our reserve of active admins will soon be underwater. Wikipedia now needs suitable editors to come forward. This can only be achieved either through changes to the current system, a radical alternative, or by fiat from elsewhere. A lot of work is constantly being done behind the scenes by the coordinators and task force members, such as monitoring the talk pages, discussing new ideas, organising the project pages, researching statistics and keeping them up to date. You'll also see for example that we have recently made tables to compare how other Wikipedias choose their sysops, and some tools have been developed to more closely examine !voters' habits. The purpose of WP:RFA2011 is to focus attention on specific issues of our admin selection process and to develop RfC proposals for solutions to improve them. For this, we have organised the project into dedicated sections each with their own discussion pages. It is important to understand that all Wikipedia policy changes take a long time to implement whether or not the discussions appear to be active - getting the proposals right before offering them for discussion by the broader community is crucial to the success of any RfC. Consider keeping the pages and their talk pages on your watchlist; do check out older threads before starting a new one on topics that have been discussed already, and if you start a new thread, please revisit it regularly to follow up on new comments. The object of WP:RFA2011 is not to make it either easier or harder to become an admin - those criteria are set by those who !vote at each RfA. By providing a unique venue for developing ideas for change independent of the general discussion at WT:RFA, the project has two clearly defined goals: Improving the environment that surrounds RfA in order to encourage mature, experienced editors of the right calibre to come forward, pass the interview, and dedicate some of their time to admin tasks. Discouraging, in the nicest way possible of course, those whose RfA will be obvious NOTNOW or SNOW, and to guide them towards the advice pages. The fastest way is through improvement to the current system. Workspace is however also available within the project pages to suggest and discuss ideas that are not strictly within the remit of this project. Users are invited to make use of these pages where they will offer maximum exposure to the broader community, rather than individual projects in user space. We already know what's wrong with RfA - let's not clutter the project with perennial chat. RFA2011 is now ready to propose some of the elements of reform, and all the task force needs to do now is to pre-draft those proposals in the project's workspace, agree on the wording, and then offer them for central discussion where the entire Wikipedia community will be more than welcome to express their opinions in order to build consensus. New tool Check your RfA !voting history! Since the editors' RfA !vote counter at X!-Tools has been down for a long while, we now have a new RfA Vote Counter to replace it. A significant improvement on the former tool, it provides a a complete breakdown of an editor's RfA votes, together with an analysis of the participant's voting pattern. Are you ready to help? Although the main engine of RFA2011 is its task force, constructive comments from any editors are always welcome on the project's various talk pages. The main reasons why WT:RfA was never successful in getting anything done are that threads on different aspects of RfA are all mixed together, and are then archived where nobody remembers them and where they are hard to find - the same is true of ad hoc threads on the founder's talk page.

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of RfA reform 2011 at 15:51, 25 September 2011 (UTC).

Greetings

Hi, hope all is well with you and yours. I've finally been shamed into creating User:WereSpielChequers/Recall (Pedro named me in his, so I realised I really ought to have one myself). Would you be willing to be on the list? If so just edit it and move your name out of the hidden bit. ϢereSpielChequers 19:54, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Can I make the request now???? PLEASE??? PRETTY PLEASE---Balloonman ^{Poppa Balloon} 20:18, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Go on - for the lulz and all that :) Pedro :  Chat  20:19, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Well at the moment there's just two of you.... thought there may be more soon. But I was tempted to make the trigger number 1 plus the number of members of the list who have edited in the last month. ϢereSpielChequers 20:25, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Survey for new page patrollers

New page patrol – Survey Invitation Hello Balloonman! The WMF is currently developing new tools to make new page patrolling much easier. Whether you have patrolled many pages or only a few, we now need to know about your experience. The survey takes only 6 minutes, and the information you provide will not be shared with third parties other than to assist us in analyzing the results of the survey; the WMF will not use the information to identify you. If this invitation also appears on other accounts you may have, please complete the survey once only. If this has been sent to you in error and you have never patrolled new pages, please ignore it. Please click HERE to take part. Many thanks in advance for providing this essential feedback. You are receiving this invitation because you have patrolled new pages. For more information, please see NPP Survey

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of Wiki Media Foundation at 11:29, 25 October 2011 (UTC).

The Bugle: Issue LXVII, September 2011

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; medal recipients; contest results Articles: The month's featured and A-class Milhist content Book reviews: Nick-D and Ian Rose look at Australian air power Op-ed: Buggie111 ruminates about WikiLife and WikiDeath

To receive this newsletter on your talk page, join the project or sign up here. If you are a member who does not want delivery, please go to this page. EdwardsBot (talk) 01:52, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Eh?

([2]) Scratches head. --Dweller (talk) 15:18, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

I have no clue... I haven't been on your page today. My best guess is that I fat fingered something, but other than that... no idea. I checked my edit history to see if there were other weird edits (eg to see if I might have been hacked) but this was it. So sorry about that... dunno how it happened.---Balloonman ^{Poppa Balloon} 15:54, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

I thought it would be something like that, cheers. It's happened to me before - I have real spadefingers, especially when logged in on my phone :-) --Dweller (talk) 10:18, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Balloonman. You have new messages at Alpha Quadrant's talk page.
Message added 05:39, 5 November 2011 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Alpha_Quadrant ^(talk) 05:39, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

My recall criteria

Mwahaha...

Ok, I believe it should be easy to remove the bit, so I think I set the bar fairly low: User:Balloonman/recall---Balloonman ^{Poppa Balloon} 21:01, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Mwahahaha! I hold your administrative fate in my hands! –xeno^talk 21:04, 8 November 2011 (UTC) In seriousness, I think these are just slightly lenient.

I want them on the lenient side... but I will go back and make a quick modification.---Balloonman ^{Poppa Balloon} 21:38, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Ref on Pius Heinz

The ref really was not there when I deleted the refname. If you look at the revision before mine, the ref was completely missing. My bad for not looking back further, but I did not do it without cause. :) BarryTheUnicorn (talk)

I see what I did. I deleted the previous statement in a prior edit, not realizing I had deleted the ref as well (which messed up the subsequent reference). Totally my mistake! BarryTheUnicorn (talk)

No problem ;-) I figured it was a mistake, but wanted to alert you to it in as friendly of a manner as I could manage via the written word.---Balloonman ^{Poppa Balloon} 15:25, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

ArbCOM Elections

I've had two people contact me about running for ArbCOM... and the answer is simply "No." I have zero desire to run for ArbCOM (presumably because I contemplated it last year.) So if you were wondering if I was gonna throw my hat into the ring, the answer is a resounding NO!---Balloonman ^{Poppa Balloon} 05:42, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Make that three :) --regentspark (comment) 14:44, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the vote of confidence, but NO ;-)---Balloonman ^{Poppa Balloon} 14:48, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi

G'day. I'm trying to distill a picture of the problem with controversial image use. Would you mind giving me a brief summary of what you think the problem is here? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 09:44, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Preganancy

I strongly believe everything I have posted on that page. I have every right to argue against editors like yourself who want to push Wikipedia towards Conservapedia. I have every bright to say it clearly and firmly. That you (and other conservatives) failed to accept the real result of the previous RfC shows either poor logic or bad faith. There is no question in my mind. I am defending a well established status quo. You want it to change. You must behave well to get any acceptance at all for your view. Many of us don't believe you have behaved well. HiLo48 (talk) 04:03, 28 November 2011 (UTC)