Very nicely put, Howard.

Terms like folk, traditional, and folk process are nothing more than shorthand for forms based upon processes that you yourself have indicated that you understand (again, I refer you to your own words I quoted above). You have described your session as 100% traditional, you refer directly above to "Traditional Ballad Singers, Storytellers, & Folk Singers"; clearly, you intend these words to mean something when you use them, you just have a problem when other people use them. Apparently, what is meaningful when you say it is meaningless when I say it. And you say you're not muddying the waters?

"No they don't though, because these processes are an integral part of those other sorts of music too."

Not in the same way and not to the same degree. There is nothing comparable in classical, marching band and death metal (to continue with these examples) that is equivalent to hundreds of different variants of Child #200 with divergent melodies, arrangments, plots, lyrical devices; the 'Drowsy Sleeper'/'Silver Dagger' cluster of ballads/songs in North America; or the ubiquitous 'Cotton-Eyed Joe'. The diversity of forms reflects "a cultural idiom of song making & remaking in an largely working-class oral culture which may have preceded or succeeded the Broadsides," to borrow a phrase, something that cannot be demonstrated in the desemination and performance of Beethoven's choral symphonies (for example).

"Offending words? The whole thing is writ large in the very DNA of the thing."

More sweeping generalizations, Sub. And still no specific reference to a collector (an individual, mind you) that ever believed that the working class was incapable of producing anything. Nor any indication you are aware that collecting and scholarship have moved on from those mist-shrouded, romantic beginnnings. You might want to look into the work of Mark Wilson and Art Rosenbaum in North America for a more up-to-date philosopy and practice of collecting, and more importantly to hear some incredible music.