Talk:Pioneers! O Pioneers!

Personally, my attitude is live and let live. However, you guys shouldn't be surprised if someone comes along and deletes the full text of the poem. Wikipedia isn't generally considered the place for such things. Just thought You oughta know. -Dhodges 23:35, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Is the fact that a Whitman poem was used in a commercial really all that relevant to encyclopedic content? I would propose deleting the section, but I'll wait for other opinions.
 * Well, seeing as how the commercial is being seen in two countries and people are probably googling the poem, I'd say it is relevant.--KrossTransmit? 03:23, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Its pretty common for songs by modern artists to have a mention on their pages when they are used in an advertisement. unless you make it wikipedia wide, I say its relevant. Plus, its not like there is too much content in this article. Lucifer-oxy (talk) 16:52, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Relevant. I've never heard of the poem until it was used in the Levi's commercial and it took me quite some time to find the full text. Glad it's here. Kar98 (talk) 05:26, 28 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I think some balance is called for; we aren't suppoised to bring every commercial to life and relevancy. I predict less than 6 months from now, no one will remember the commercial. Let the reference stay for now, and work on finding critical essays on the poem, themes, meanings, etc. Then we can stop shilling for Levis. - 207.181.229.217 (talk) 06:10, 14 November 2009 (UTC)


 * The commercial makes the fact important at this moment. I came scurrying over to WP to find out more, and found out not very much more. I tracked down a citation, and also found the part about WW reading America aloud. It's interesting and relevant now. It might not be in a year.

--Nemonoman (talk) 19:22, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

The word "debouch" is mis-linked
It's nice that the not-so-common word "debouch" in the poem is linked to an article about it (the Wikipedia article). Unfortunately, that article addresses only the noun version of debouch, but the poem uses the word as a verb. So I've changed the link to the Wiktionary page debouch, which defines the verb as well as the noun.Daqu (talk) 04:36, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

This article can't even be *linked* to the poem??????????
Okay, it's one thing to say that because computer storage is so terribly expensive that this article can't afford to waste space by quoting its subject.

It's another thing entirely to not even link this article to the text of the poem. That makes no sense at all, since it is in the public domain and is almost certainly available on the web.

Come to think of it, it's a famous poem by a famous poet. What exactly is the problem with retaining the text in this article? Oh, the fact that the Levi's commercial is no longer current? That makes lots of sense -- a commercial is the only reason we'd ever want to include a poem in Wikipedia. Obviously.Daqu (talk) 07:18, 4 January 2010 (UTC)


 * The article does link to the text of the poem. Nowadays, we don't include public domain information in the article itself.  We put it over at Wikisource and then link to that.  It's not really an issue of wasted space, since the additions and deletions of the source hangs around regardless of the current state of the article.  It's an issue of organizing information.


 * Great, thank you for the explanation, I appreciate that. Also, I'm glad to learn the article's linked to the poem. But I'm too dumb to find the link!  I don't doubt you, but can you please tell me where the link is?  (Also, if I can't find it, probably a lot of other people can't find it as well.)  Thanks for your help and I apologize for being too dumb to find it.Daqu (talk) 05:59, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
 * There's a box at the bottom of the article that says "Wikisource has original text related to this article". I actually agree that the box is a little hard to notice (I've been every bit as confused as you on other articles in the past). The formatting of the link is a guideline on Wikipedia, defined at Wikimedia sister projects.  It gives you four choices, and I don't know if there is any rule of thumb for choosing which to use.  To argue how the link is presented in articles, you'd want to talk about it there. -Verdatum (talk) 15:31, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Will Geer?
Really? I've seen the Levi's commercial, and it sounds nothing like Will Geer. I'll admit that I'm only familiar with the work he did in his later years (The Waltons and one episode of Mission: Impossible), but I can't imagine even a young Will Geer sounding like that. He was born in Indiana, and the narrator in the commercial has somewhat of a New York-sounding accent. Anybody have a source for this information, like at least when the recitation by Geer was supposedly recorded? MaxVolume (talk) 03:53, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * It checks out. Apparently it's from a Smithsonian Folkways recording from the 1970s.  I've added a ref. -Verdatum (talk) 15:43, 12 January 2010 (UTC)