"Respect the 1954, but, don't hammer us with it in a thought-police manner.
Folk gatherings need smiles ,warmth , community and enjoyment to brought back to them - not all this eternal backbiting and bickering."

As one who 'respects the 1954' I take issue with this. To insist on the validity of a scholarly,thoughtful and widely accepted definition is not to 'hammer' anyone - nor to 'police' them. Please note that people like me have no punitive powers whatsoever - nor would we wish to acquire them! And the real-lfe folk gatherings that I regularly attend have all the "smiles, warmth, community and enjoyment" that you could wish for. Most of the "eternal backbiting and bickering", as you put it, seems to occur on Mudcat. And IMO the reason it occurs on Mudcat is because certain people have a completely irrational desire to have the particular type(s) of music that they like labelled as 'folk music' (for reasons which mystify me). It also seems that because these people can't get the '1954 people' to agree with them they keep on asking the same silly questions over and over again - presumably until one of us cracks? I can't help noticing that this technique of asking the same questions repeatedly until a different answer is elicited is one used in interrogations - which leads me to ask: who is it really that has the punitive tendencies?