"working musicians with an agenda rather than people who are fans of the stuff and have been for many years"

What makes you think those are mutually exclusive categories?

Since you seem genuinely upset by the responses to your posts, glueman, can I suggest that you:

(a) Refrain from firing off highly contentious statements in the most provocative language ("They seek him here, they seek him there but can't find the noble savage anywhere... uncritical dogma and an appeal to sentiment, beyond any rational discussion..."), and then decline to expand on your reasons for making them ("do the homework, it'll make sense if you do and won't if you can't be arsed... I'm not going to post a potted thesis").

(b) Read carefully and respond to opposing opinions rather than ignoring them completely, or misrepresenting what they've said (e.g. repeatedly making the accusation that "people use the definition as a stick to beat singers they don't approve of" after any number of rebuttals on this specific point), or treating your fellow posters with condescension, contempt and downright abuse ("folk policemen... folkier than thou tendency... Dickensian despot... bullies... quasi-religious, old testament judgements... desert-minded fathers with a definition fixation... pedantic... obsessive compulsion... self perpetuating folk elite... vile shits").

(c) Stop coming over the injured innocent the very day after you boasted of "the sheer pleasure of baiting" other posters.

Then - who knows - you might be able to get your discussion of collecting practices or the influence of neo-romanticism, if that's what you really wanted. Although it might be too late now.