we need a new yardstick to judge songs by and that is quality,not whether a song has been folk processed.

Nobody's saying this is about quality.

It's about honesty - on your part.

It is outrageously disrespectful to the creator of the song of you make no effort to find out anything about them. Whether it was written ten years ago by somebody with a dozen CDs out, or whether all you can say is that it came from the musical community of Donegal 150 years ago. You say what you know about the processes of transmission and modiification the song has been through, and you try to know as much as you can about it, or you're just treating the song as something you picked off the shelf at Tesco.

(For that matter it wouldn't hurt to think about who the workers were who got that packet onto the shelf at Tesco and what they did, either).

"Folk process" is a pretty superficial label but it says you've put some effort in the direction of thinking about how that song you have was made, and how its history might be uniquely different from any other song.