Familypedia:Haplogroups

Genetic genealogy is part of this site and may take up a greater proportion of it in the future. Much reference is made to haplogroup. Like Wikipedia, we have a Category:Haplogroups, and in descending order Category:Human haplogroups, more specific categories for the two major types of human haplogroup, and individual articles about specific human haplogroups. Because of the scope of this wiki, we need not use the adjective "human" in this context except in article and category names where the distinction could be useful and match Wikipedia.

The two main types of haplogroup (Y-DNA and mtDNA) are distinguished by a letter or group of letters and appended numbers, with (unfortunately) some overlapping nomenclature. (U, V, W, X, Y, and Z are purely mtDNA as of May 2010 but most other letters can apply to each sort.) Therefore our pages (articles and matching categories) cannot be just "haplogroup X": some of them have to specify which sort of DNA they refer to. So we should continue to use the Wikipedia nomenclature for all, e.g. Haplogroup C (mtDNA) or Haplogroup C3 (Y-DNA).

However, to simplify writing, we can allow shorter links (e.g. haplogroup Z) to unambiguous terms with redirects. We should use disambig for the ambiguous ones so that writers can quickly check whether they need to be more specific. Some now unambiguous may become ambiguous in future; easy to adjust when it happens.

It is suggested that:
 * 1) each haplogroup's main article be in its own category ("piped" to be listed first) as well as in Category:Human Y-DNA haplogroups or Category:Human mtDNA haplogroups.
 * 2) each category for a specific haplogroup be in the overall category for its type but also in a simply-named category using just the initial letter, partly because they are nearly all very closely related to others based on the same initial, and partly as a guide to which combinations are unique and can therefore be written in the short form to create links; those "group" categories being listed in the overall category.

Each article about a specific haplogroup should link to related haplogroups, e.g. those shown at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup#Overlap_between_y-haplogroups_and_mt-haplogroups.

Any article about a particular family DNA project may be included in the surname category (piped with an asterisk) and any relevant specific or group haplogroup category. (If they become too numerous, we may subcategorize. No sign of such growth by May 2010.)

Editors may keep up with the "play" by keeping an eye on the publications of the ISOGG.