"the only reason people ever want to define 'folk' is to decide which acts can be excluded from the genre"

True. The loathsome puritanical streak gnaws away until folk is no more than a reference in an academic journal, so pure and revered that nothing meets the definition, even 1954 left behind as the vague and inclusive trawl of dilettantes and revisionists. One Santa lookalike with a sore throat singing to nobody in a closed pub, the austere beauty of it noted only by the landlord who had all his punters driven away by the wretchedness of their own condition in its awesome, awful, beautiful, tuneless, pathetic thrall.

The thread also touches on my other pet hate, the time served folkie, as though dedicating your life to the music compared to a single iota of talent.
Have we done the misunderstood unappreciated folkie yet?