Talk:Balance board

Merge with rola bola?
I don't think the balance board should be confused with the rola bola. The balance board is destined to a medical use. The rola bola seems to be used in leisure, sports, entertainment.

Further, I would like to point out that the word for balance board in French is "plateau de Freeman". It would be interesting to find out who this "Freeman" is, it seems more an anglo-saxon name than a French one.

A happy user of the "balance board" to recover from ankle problems

Robert Monnier —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 88.139.171.101 (talk • contribs).
 * I agree. The merge template's been up for 4 months, no comments in support of merging, I'll remove the template. --Darkwind (talk) 22:54, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I think this balance board and a rola bola are exactly the same things: the two articles should be merged. I never heard of “plateau de Freeman” but I know we sometimes says “rouleau américain” for rola bola in French. A2 (talk) 01:49, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Unencyclopedic
Wikipedia is NOT a manual, guidebook, or textbook, this article reads like a how-to in many sections. Cavenba (talk • contribs) 02:03, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, this page is absurd. It's way too long, has far too many pictures, and is more like a guide to living life based on balance boards. 209.6.221.159 (talk) 05:16, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Rola Bola again
Rola-bola = balance board. they are exactly the same thing, which you do the same thing on, the only difference is the philosphy one takes. Merge it with rola bola. Hell i'll do it if noone else will.

Lucaswilkins (talk) 08:16, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

If anything, rola bola should be merged into balance board, because a rola bola is one type of balance board. 209.6.221.159 (talk) 05:16, 2 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree that the rola bola should be merged into balance board, because a rola bola is one type of balance board.--Mick The Surfer (talk) 07:50, 16 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Merge done as per foregoing. -- P 1 9 9 • TALK 15:22, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Original research
I marked the article with Original Research. I see no citations (at least none regarding the actual topic of the article), and the article looks like one long "how to" page anyway. --67.97.118.4 (talk) 16:36, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Ridiculous
This article is ridiculous it sounds like a guide and just sounds unprofessional in general. Ill be attempting to clean out pictures and clean up the text. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.74.254.35 (talk) 21:26, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Why a "Playing the game: its tension" section
Rationale for including this section despite some readers' possible judgment that it is inappropriate for an encyclopedia:

An article about a piece of recreational equipment that didn't include a description of the recreational aspect of the activity of using the equipment would be inadequate. The details of the recreational aspect, being merely experiences and mainly ones that are merely felt, aren't perceptible by an eye or other testing instrument and are therefore less objectively noticeable and reportable than are details such as the shape, materials and movements of the recreational equipment; but immediate recreational experiences are the essence of a balance board's function for those users whose purpose isn't to bring about some later improvement in their body, such as physical therapy, injury prevention and athletic skill; and users whose purpose isn't recreation experience the game-like tensions of trying to stand on the board no less than recreational users do.

An article about, for example, gambling, music, sex or tourism that accurately and thoroughly described the shape, materials and movements of the equipment and other objectively observable aspects of the topic but ignored its experiential dimensions (for fear of entering a subjective realm and despair of ever being able to capture its sensations, motivations and other affective realities in sentences) would not be encyclopedic or illuminating. Such an article could hardly be considered informative and for most readers would not be worth reading. Descriptions of trains, their schedules and fares, visa requirements, time zones, currency exchange rates, routes, a country's language, its manners and its history wouldn't give a reader who didn't already know what tourism is any idea of what it is about, such as how it is different from the life of a traveling salesman, diplomat or spy. This rationale could be illustrated further by imagining some corresponding analogies for a non-participating and uncomprehending observer's descriptions of gambling, music and sex based on his/her study of their paraphernalia and parameters.

So, an article about balance boards needs to describe what standing on one feels like. A description of what something feels like--in this case, intense physical challenge, intense fear and intense fun--is going to be impressionistic. Until research is someday done by attaching electrodes to a balance board user's brain and other body parts, the choice that needs to be made in this article isn't between a scientific description and an impressionistic one but rather between an impressionistic one written by someone who didn't focus sharply enough on his/her subjective experience while standing on the board and afterward and an impressionistic one written by someone who did.

This Wikipedia article would be improved more by correcting and vivifying its "Playing the game: its tension" section than by omitting it. The essays in the 1990 book A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman are literary-quality models for describing the human body's senses and their interactions with consciousness and mood and for paying attention to those processes of one's own.

DavidMaisel (talk) 19:26, 26 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I believe the section needs five things:
 * Needs to be reworded to resemble an encyclopedia.
 * Needs to be focused. The justifications you provided seem to be around documenting the psychological effects that a balance board might induce.
 * Needs to remember notability. You might be able to fall into a trance while on a board, but you could also do that while just standing, or sitting, or reading the internet.
 * Needs to change that damn title. The rest of the section could be perfect, but that title just confuses me.
 * Needs lots of Citation Needed and Original Research? tags.
 * Along those lines, I'm reworking the section to be "Psychological Effects" and start paring down the garbage in the section (or moving it to more appropriate sections). Primalmoon (talk) 07:33, 1 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Actually, just to nitpick the argument: Tourism doesn't have anything about experience of tourism. Sex only talks about well studied psychological effects (human bonding, effects of orgasm, etc.). Gambling only mentions the psychological effects such as gambling addiction. So along those lines, I think this section should only be including things that are real psychological effects. Since most of the effects deal with just balancing, that sounds easy enough. Primalmoon (talk) 07:47, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Does article require complete rewrite?
This article hasn't improved much if at all since it first caught my attention on December 2009. Anyone want to try to salvage the article? I'll help identify and assess sources. I've also started a discussion on the coi problems here, which could use further analysis and others' perspectives. --Ronz (talk) 02:01, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Where is Lizzie Borden when you need her? This article is ridiculously over-detailed, and needs substantial axe-work. We devote less space to Tachyons than to this... AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:18, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I did some massive axing of the article today. While some of the remaining sections may need some rephrasing (a few unencyclopedic comments are left here and there), I don't believe anymore axing is required. While I didn't intend for this, I am proud to say that this page is now smaller than the Tachyon article (26,417 bytes here vs 29,951 bytes in Tachyon). Primalmoon (talk) 09:18, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

More discussion
I'm an expert in the the field of Rolla Bolla. If I can help clarify anything, or if looking at my work helps, I'd like to help write some of this article. www.balanceabstract.tumblr.com Thanks, Skye Skye Gellmann (talk) 13:44, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Undue weight on niche uses
Just thought I'd point out to anyone who feels like improving it that the article mentions some rather unlikely uses of a balance board in the first sentence, and cites sources in the explanation which I would probably call niche. While I don't doubt given the sources that some people use balance boards for musical training, it's hardly a mainstream use. 86.145.152.9 (talk) 16:48, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

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