Thanks for your "more light than heat input Steve" much needed.
I take your points completely, but would just like to clarify one of them.
"is quite different to the way it is used by the general public"
The term is, I believe not really used by the general public in any way other than in very general generalised references - you could empty a bar in five minutes flat with one of these discussions.
Folk is a term that has been latched onto by a small number of people to hang their own particular hat - I don't believe it does any genre of song to be lumped in indiscriminately with another if you want it to be taken seriously.
Over the last twenty years Irish traditional (folk) music has come into its own and has shifted from being referred to contemptuously on the media as "diddley-di music" to now being accepted as a fully fledged and serious art-form, with all the benefits that has brought.
Up to the present recession, to ask for a research grant for publishing or producing a C.D. or collecting or setting up a heritage centre or, as we did, bringing together the results of thirty years field work, was pushing on an open door.
We have two of the finest traditional music archives in Europe, if not the world (look up the Traditional Irish Music Archive).
Many thousands of youngsters are taking up the music and playing it in traditional styles or experimenting with it - room for all.
This has fed into the tourist industry, bringing thousands to Ireland to listen to, play and learn about (unadulterated) Traditional music each year.
This really hasn't been achieved by faffing around with definitions to please some of the people all of the time, but by someone saying "this is what we are and this is what we are about".
Song has some way to go yet to make up lost ground, but it seems to be getting there slowly.
Our collection has been taken up by our County Library and is due to go on line in the nest couple of months to cater for all tastes, singers, listeners, researchers, cultural and oral historians.... whoever.
We passed on a copy of our work to an authoritative singer friend in the North recently - his comment - "every County should have one".
With a bit of luck......
Jim Carroll