I have enjoyed reading this thread. It contains a lot of good down to earth common sense.

There is another thread on the same Mudcat page as this thread titled "So what is 'TRADITIONAL'Folk Music ?" which contains some very similar lines of discussion found here.
You might like to plough through it to see what I mean and make your very valuable contributions there as well.
I also hope that it will help to inform and add to the discussions posted here.

A sort of mutually beneficial cross-fertilisation of ideas I guess (hope).