I gave up years ago on trying to maintain a definition of "folk song". I know that most people who use the term use it very loosely. I lament that "traditional music" carries, for most people, connotations of old, fusty, boring, etc.

I think the reason a lot of people are wishing for a more, well, definitive definition of "folk song" is because we feel like our genre of music has been taken over by a bunch of folks who don't play, and don't have any interest in, the genre of traditional music. I could make a very good case for rap being folk music, going by a process based definition. How would all the singer/songwriters feel if we suddenly started calling rap music "folk music"?

I really don't get lumping Joni Mitchell and Martin Carthy into the same genre.