Howard Jones is right. "1954 definition" was an academics' concept. Since then, academics have refined, scrapped, moved on, whatever. 1954 definition is irrelevant aside from when you are doing an historiography, or a study of the development of the concept (like a meta-study).

If one rejects academics, great. But if one rejects academics and they want to use this "1954 definition", then what does that make them? Quasi-academic, I suppose. It's like, I'm kinda sorta into history...but not really...so I read some out-dated and out-moded history book from the 50s.

1954 Definition is all about this sort of quasi-academic nature of much of the "Folk Music" enthusiast culture. It's like people want to simultaneously proclaim that they don't have any "book larnin'" because that would taint them somehow, or being something that "elites" (= non-folkies) do, but at every turn that also want to proclaim their deep knowledge of so and so song, and start performances with preambles that take twice the time it takes to actually sing a song.

1954 definition is like the "old" 1990s computer sitting in your house that you can kind of get to work to check basic email and do some word processing and which, for one's purposes "is fine." That's OK, if it really is fine for you. If you try to do much else with it though, you're in for some frustration. And chances are that rather than improve that computer, you'd just get a new model.