Karpeles and the rest of the committee in 1954 did a pretty good job."

That is one point of view. But. To accept it you also have to accept that most "commercial Folk Groups" such as the Dublin city Ramblers,Dubliners, strawbs etc largely sang synthetic folk and were traitors to the cause.
In a nut shell they were Folk singers that largely did not sing folk.

I prefer Big Al's take on the subject and agree with most if not all he has to say on the subject.
Wikipedia(although definitely not the last word on anything)describes Gordon Lightfoot as an "International Folk Legend". But he penned a lot of his own material. SO is wikipedia totally wrong? I have no problem with the description - others regard it as sacrilege.
No matter how you define folk, you will here contemporary material in a folk club.
There seems little point in having a narrow "academic definition" when the lie of it is exposed in every folk club. Majority rules in a democracy - the argument is answered by numerical superiority probably every time a folk club meets unless it specifies traditional only.