Talk:The Shape Shifter

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The bot message is off the article, and I just changed it to class=start in WikiPrject Novels and WikeProject Books, to class=start. I will let the the Indigenous people of North America project make its own call It has more than a stub, to be sure. --Prairieplant (talk) 20:36, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

End of series

Can this book be the end of the series, Joe Leaphorn / Jim Chee Navajo Tribal Police? Hillerman's daughter Anne is writing novels with some of these characters, but she is not her father, and her approach seems quite different to me. Further, no one has written articles for her novels for Wikipedia. There is not a series article for these Tony Hillerman novels yet, nor is there one of those handy templates to place at the end of each article, making it easy to go from the article on one novel to the article on another in the series. I do not know how to write one of those templates, but I do find them handy.

When can the message about this being a stub article get deleted? It is no longer a stub. --Prairieplant (talk) 20:46, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

@Prairieplant: It was showing as a stub, because not all the Wikiproject banners above had been changed. It's the project banners that trigger the message of what class an article is. — Maile (talk) 16:02, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Thank you, Maile66. Now I need to learn how to make a Hillerman template for the articles on his novels. --Prairieplant (talk) 22:05, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

@Prairieplant: It's not that difficult, especially for someone who has been around as long as you. Pick any navbox at Category:American writer navigational boxes. Open it in an edit window and follow its example. Maybe copy it to your sandbox, and change it to fit what you want. Once you have worked up something you like, copy and paste it to Template:Tony Hillerman. Good luck, and contact me on my talk page if you get stuck. — Maile (talk) 22:17, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Torreon in New Mexico - which place is mentioned in the novel?

Editor Maile66 added a list of places in the novel from a book by Linford 2011 on May 27, 2019, and left the Torreon entry like this: Torreon, NM. Narky Blert first added the disambiguation needed tag on June 13, 2019 and still no one has had the book and the time to resolved this. Torreon, New Mexico is an ambiguous title for a wiki link, as two articles and two counties in New Mexico have a place name of Torreon. For consistent style, all the entries in that list have the state name spelled out, no two letter postal abbreviations are used now.

I spent time checking the links left by Maile66 and trying to find other Wikipedia articles for any location without a link. Torreon is the name for two places 129 miles apart in New Mexico. I do not have this book at home to resolve the point. The two places are Torreon, Sandoval County, New Mexico and Torreon, Torrance County, New Mexico. The one in Torrance county is southeast of Albuquerque and is part of Albuquerque metro area. I learned this using google maps here. The one in Sandoval County is a Navajo place northwest of Albuquerque. It requires reading the novel to see when Torreon is mentioned to know which of these two places is meant. Tony Hillerman's characters drive all over the Four Corners area on long driving trips to get where they need to be, so either place is credible on the surface. I had guessed the Torrance county location, which I see now was a bad move, guessing. I have put the two choices in the Edit note, and left the entry as a link to a disambiguation page. Editors come by and eliminate the note I put, and now eliminate the disambiguation flag. This is a true confusion of geography in the novel itself that requires checking the novel, and requires disambiguation. Does anyone have the book at hand? I have changed the text to that incorrect link, and the dn template is in place, plus my note in the Edit text of the two places that could be the one mentioned in the novel. No one who has edited has indicated how they know which place is meant based on the text in the novel. I will keep reverting until it is made certain which place is correct based on the text, Lennart97, Dylpickle2k, or until I can read the book again myself. --Prairieplant (talk) 09:43, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

One solution in cases like this is to add an {{efn}} something like "There are two places in New Mexico called Torreon - Torreon, Sandoval County, New Mexico and Torreon, Torrance County, New Mexico. It is impossible to know which one this is, or indeed if it might be a fictional place, without checking the WP:OFFLINE source." Less than ideal, but it tells our readers all we know. Narky Blert (talk) 09:55, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Yes, either Narky’s solution or simply unlink it. There’s no point in leaving a disambiguation link that might never be solved and which a lot of editors will inevitably waste time on trying to solve it. Lennart97 (talk) 11:14, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

I like the solution put forward by Narky Blert. Someone will read the novel again and make it obvious which location is meant. --Prairieplant (talk) 03:52, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Done. Feel free to tweak the wording of the footnote in any way you like, obviously. It seems unsufficiently probable to me that the place is fictitious to include that option in the footnote, but again, feel free to include this if you think otherwise. Lennart97 (talk) 21:45, 2 February 2021 (UTC)