Sorry Bryan and others who object to the length of my postings; I think this is going to be a long one.
Perhaps it's time to put this discussion into its actual context and get it out of the greenhouse atmosphere of the folk scene.
The 1954 definition arose directly, not out of armchair musings of the 'acaedmics' SS and his cronies pour so much of their contempt on, but directly from the 'folkface'.
Sharp, the main architect of the definition drew his information, not from books, god knows, there were little of those on the subject when he was reaching his 'Conclusions', but from the rural poor of the south of England and from the mountain people of the Southern Appalachians in the US. Hammond and Gardiner got theirs from similar sources, from rural labourers,and particularly from the workhouses of Hampshire and Dorset, Vaughan Williams, again from the farm labourers and from the fishing people of East Anglia. Grainger's magnificent collection came mainly from farmworkers on the east coast in Lincolnshire. The work of Gavin Greig and John Ord was carried out in the farms and in particular, in the bothies of the north east of Scotland. All the rest of the originators and supporters of the definition, without exception, were taking their inspiration and information from similar sources.
Later on the validity of the definition was supported by the work of Hamish Henderson among the Travelling people of Aberdeenshire and other working people of Scotland. Hugh Shields was working with the farm labourers and fishermen of North Donegal. The BBC collectors, Kennedy, Ennis, Bob Copper, Sean O'Boyle and others were all getting their information and their material from miners, mill-workers, fishermen, farm labourers, Travellers...... the working people of Britain and Ireland. It is these people - 'the folk' - who put the folk in folk, that's what the term refers to.
MacColl, Seeger and Parker took their folk songs and the inspiriation for their self-penned songs directly from fishermen like Sam Larner and Ronnie Balls, from Ben Bright, a seaman who worked under sail, road navvies like Jack Hamilton, and from English and Scots Travellers, from miners such as the Elliot family and from manual workers like George Dunne, Beckett Whitehead and Mark Anderson.   
Up to date, one of the most prolific collectors ever, Tom Munnelly (an ex factory worker), with 22,000 songs to his credit, was getting his material and his information from identical sources in the Republic of Ireland.
Our (electrician and office worker) own information came mainly from Travellers, from small farmers and rural labourers in the west of Ireland and from manual workers and fishermen in East Anglia.
It is this work and these sources that gave rise to and validated (and continues to validate as far as I'm concerned) the 1954 definition. Academics my arse!!!
And you would substitute it with what - the arbitrary whims of a tiny handful organisers and revival singers who, in most cases, have never ventured outside the protective bubbles of a folk club for their songs and music. It is these, as far as I can see, who are the real armchair academics.
No Betsy - you give it a break!
For me, the terms 'folk' and 'traditional' are joined at the hip, the former referring to the people who made and transmitted the songs, the latter to the filtering process that shaped them and knocked the sharp edges off.
As far as I'm concerned, our folk process is now finished. The people who produced the songs, stories and music have now become passive recipients rather than participants and creators, largely thanks to the intrusive influence of television. We saw it happen virtually overnight when the Travellers went out and bought portable television sets.
In my direct experience as a life-long manual worker, SS's "people coming in after a hard day's work in the fields or on the cabs, the Job Centre, the hospital, the school, the building site, the ministry, or computer terminal" don't make music, songs or stories any more; we have it made for us and the only say we have in the matter lies in the on-off switch and the television hand control.
The folk song revival once drew its inspiration and its material from the efforts of the people I've described above and in doing so, I believe they took on the responsibility for the survival of, or, at the very least, the accurate documentation of that material and all the information that goes with it.
Of course there's nothing wrong with drawing inspiration from the material to create new songs - it would be as irrelevant to modern life as 'The Sealed Knot' or historic 'war game' recreation if this didn't happen - an exercise in romantic nostalgia. But let's not mix up the two; we're observers, beneficiaries and documentors of a folk tradition, not a part of the process.
If anybody can come up with a new formula which fully combines the process and the people I have described above with the creations of the 'singer, songwriters', by all means let's consider it, but until somebody does, the old definition stands.
Jim Carroll