Jim, this has been discussed ad nauseum. People will never agree on a definition of folk music so your insistence that your definition is the only one of any merit will always cause controversy. Our folk club was and still is well attended and a typical singers night will see a majority of songs belonging to your definition but will also contain a small number that you would not regard as folk. It is far from the 'anything goes' definition that you seem to think is prevalent but it is not rigidly stuck in the past either.

You seem to have cause and effect confused when you say that folk clubs started to decline when they started to deviate from your view. It was the other way round. Folk clubs started to decline well before the introduction of a more relaxed regime. The definition became more flexible to try and breathe a bit of life into a dying club scene. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't. C'est la vie.