Forum:Capitalization of "roller derby"

I notice this wiki uses Roller Derby as a capitalized term pretty consistently. I think it'd be better to only use the capitalized term to refer to the leagues run by the Seltzers.

For pre-1935 roller skating endurance races, "roller derby" was the term the newspapers used.

For Leo Seltzer's first races in 1935, "Roller Derby" was the term that was used, and this was also applied to the modified race developed by Seltzer with Damon Runyon around 1937. At some point, Seltzer registered "Roller Derby" as a collective trademark for both forms of the sport as used by his organization, and he protected it aggressively until the 1973 closure of his business. Roller Games, for example, was not Roller Derby and could not bill itself as such. The same went for International Roller Speedway a generation or two earlier.

"Roller Derby", still capitalized, was then used for certain revivals from 1973 through the 2001 RollerJam TV show, but I believe always with permission, or perhaps also because the players, many of whom used to work for Jerry Seltzer, felt strongly that they were "keeping it real" and were entitled to carry on using the name. I don't know.

When the first all-female league held its first 'bout' in Texas in 2002, their version of the sport was generally described as "roller derby", not capitalized, except when newspaper editors noticed that the term was trademarked and capitalized it in a CYA move (which still happens today). As the women-led revival grew, the general term "roller derby" became absolutely ubiquitous. The trademark is still registered, but Jerry seems to realize that he's not likely to use it again and that it's useless to try to force hundreds of amateur leagues to find some other name for their version of the sport. I have seen one or two references to "Roller Derby-style skating", but those were one-time things.

I know that people who were involved with the Seltzer organization feel very strongly that they are the only people who ever played Roller Derby, and the only thing that can be called Roller Derby is what they played, and anything played on a flat track or certainly can't be called Roller Derby, capitalized or not, and how dare these trashy, disrespectful youth of today not capitalize it ... but from the point of view of a lexicographer, a researcher, journalist, or librarian, such rhetoric is just sentimentalism. What matters is just how the term has actually used been used in the past and present, and what legal liability might be attached to it.

So I propose using the term "roller derby", uncapitalized, to refer to the sport in general, in all its forms, and using the term "Roller Derby", capitalized, to refer specifically to the Seltzer leagues (or products made by other trademark holders such as Roller Derby Skate Corp. or Viacom).

However, "The Roller Derby Wiki", being a proper noun, would not need to be changed.

—Mjb 07:30, 21 May 2008 (UTC)