"Neither side is any better or worse than the other but they are different."
Exactly - what I have been trying to say throughout these arguments Dave
It has always puzzled me how personal likes and dislikes have crept into these arguments
I will say that I don't think it either logical or particularly ethical to run "Folk Clubs" on a like-dislike basis
If you hang your shingle up saying you deal in something as specific as folk song, you have to give the punters what you say on your sign - not by any 'rule book definition' but at least an approximation of the term
I go along with MacColl when he said that if new songs weren't written the folk scene would die and the old ones retreat into archives and books.
Now I no longer sing as much as I did I've found myself resurrecting Shellback, Rambler From Clare, Tenant Farmer, O'Reilly and the Big MacNeill and Clayton Aniline - and I find they work for a rural Irish audience as well as they did for an Urban English one - and they all still turn me on.   
Of course you are right to say not all folk songs are 'good' - if you are using the term in the entertainment sense
I find 'Maid Freed From The Gallows' one of the most boring songs in the ballad canon, but when I examine its use of incremental repetition I find it an extremely useful example to understanding a common device in ballad-making
Even then, though I might not like that particular ballad, I can go to one of its offshoots, Streets of Derry and find a beautiful song which tells the same story using that device
That for me is the joy of folksong, there's always something else lurking around the corner.
I would add that it's not just academic
We made a point of asking as many of our singers as we could to define their songs - everyone we asked had their own term for songs I would call 'folk' or 'traditional'
Blind Traveller, Mary Delaney had a repertoire of over 100 songs, which she referred to as "my daddy's songs' - when we recorded her father, he knew less than ten
Mary was identifying her traditional repertoire by associating it with the type of songs her father sang - she could have doubled her repertoire with C&W songs, but when we asked her for them she refused, saying they weren't the ones we were looking for - "I only sing them 'cause that's what the lads ask for down the pub"
Traveller, Mikeen McCarthy carefully divided his repertoire into sections - "Come-all-ye's" - songs they all sang in the pub, "street songs" - the ones he had printed and sold at the fairs and "fireside songs" sung at intimate gatherings and almost exclusively traditional
Walter Pardon filled tape after tape explaining what was a "folk song" (his term) and what wasn't, and why
American singer, Jean Richie summed up this discrimination perfectly when she described her field trips to Ireland in the 1950s
She said, "if you asked for the old songs you got Danny Boy and something about colleens or something sentimental about Ireland, but if you asked them did they know Barbara Allen, that's when the beautiful old folk songs came pouring out."

"You're being a poisonous lying shit."
No I'm not Jack, and I'm disappointed to find it necessary to resort to such behaviour - maybe you're not "better than that"
I don't tell lies - nor do I try to avoid or distort points
I took your argument to imply that computers could be suitable substitutes for folk clubs - I said why I thought that not to be the case.
If I have misunderstood you, I apologise
Jim Carroll