It's not just one source over the other, it is also the impracticality of the hot air balloon for this purpose, as I stated in my post.

This observation, borne out of my (admittedly brief) exposure to both hot air balloons (I know hot air balloon pilots and have ridden with them) and weather balloons (I planned, but did not execute, a project with my son's boy scout troop to launch a weather balloon to the stratosphere), combined with my engineering instincts (FWIW), convinced that the Wikipedia source was correct.

There are some specific replies but here’s the general one.

There are two mutually exclusive descriptions. JoeDaDude didn’t just uncover one but provided the reasoning why the second explanation is far more likely.

In other words they didn’t simply assert one over the other, but rather gave you the mechanism to say “oh you’re right” or alternately to point out the flaw in their reasoning.

Because simple hot air balloons (without gas buoyancy) would not be very effective at this sort of problem. It makes much more sense to use He lift weather balloons (even if they use temperature controlled solar power to maintain proper buoyancy).

I'm just looking at the pictures, but they don't look/lift like simple hot air balloons to me. I'd lean toward the science writer simplifying the language.