Talk:USA Roller Derby

Roster

The article clearly states that the roster shown reflects the team roster that played at the World Cup in December 2011. Some skaters may very well have moved to new leagues since then; this is not relevant to this article. The source for the roster indicates who they played for then, and that is what needs to stand. It is fine to add a reference that shows that some skaters have changed teams since; but do not change the original information. Changing the affiliations without sources to back it up will continue to be reverted. Echoedmyron (talk) 20:11, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for taking care of this. — Mudwater ^(Talk) 20:34, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Trademark infringement

The United States Olympic Committee does not recognize the team described in this page as having an official affiliation to the recognized National Governing Body of the sport of roller derby, and as such are not authorized to use the exclusive trademark "Team USA". Thus, to avoid the loss of the content, we request that the contributors to this page rename the page or move its contents to a more accurate page.

The USOC legal team submitted a cease and desist letter to Mr. Goed, the manager of this team, requesting voluntary compliance with trademark law. The letter was acknowledged and it has been confirmed that the group recently stopped infringing the USOC trademark on social media, changing their public name to simply "USA Roller Derby" (https://www.facebook.com/USA-Roller-Derby-194917163892948), and removing items from their online store which also infringed on the USOC trademarks for commercial purposes (http://www.gothamgirlsrollerderby.com/store/catalog/). Usarollerderby (talk) 06:29, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Unclear if you are making this request as a representative of the USOC (in which case, be careful of possibly making an WP:Legal threats) or as a representative of the team in question (since your editor name matches what you note their facebook page was changed to). Is there a WP:reliable source to cover this change? Echoedmyron (talk) 15:26, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

I am a representative of USA Roller Sports, the recognized National Governing Body of roller derby according to the US Olympic Committee. The USA Roller Sports National Team, which officially has authorization to use the trademarked name "Team USA", will use the page titled "Team USA Roller Derby" to provide information about the women's and men's national teams. This is not a legal threat, as mentioned, a letter was already submitted to the team and they voluntarily changed their public name, which is a clear indication that this page should do so as well in order to accurately portray the group that it refers to. Here is the announcement of the official Team USA team, directly from the Team USA website (http://www.teamusa.org/USA-Roller-Sports/Features/2015/May/26/USARS-Announces-Roller-Derby-National-Team-Program) Team USA Roller Derby (talk) 18:14, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

I should note that Wikipedia is a reference work, and thus should also reflect the state of reality. If Team USA Roller Derby were referred to as such (regardless of if they were violating a trademark or not) by everyone during the period that the page refers to (which even the complainant accepts is true, otherwise the trademark dispute would not have been raised!), then the page should reflect that. (I suggest a "Team USA Roller Derby (2011-2014)" page, and a "Team USA Roller Derby (2015-)" page, with a disambiguation page to help searchers.) The current page is not reflective of the name of the team depicted during the time period it discusses. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.136.30.171 (talk) 21:27, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Also given that the roller derby community outside the United States as a whole does not recognize USARS nor use their ruleset (the international competitions have used the WFTDA rulset) and has already completed two world cups without them, it's a pretty odd gesture to require the name change in this article, and agreed that the article should reflect the history of what the pre-existing team accomplished while using a name that was later taken from them for use by a team that does not yet exist, trademark or no. That said, it's probably not worth having 2 different articles for this team, plus a potential new article for the USARS-affiliated squad (should reliable sources for anything achieved by such a squad become available), and makes the most sense to title this article by what they are currently going (as with any team that changes its name at some point). When I have time I will take a stab at properly re-writing some of the passages with the aim of fleshing out the actual history of the existing group while acknowledging the apparent name change going forward. Echoedmyron (talk) 16:51, 21 November 2015 (UTC)