"So why do you keep posting it?"
Because you - and everybody keep ignoring it in your quest to prove that they didn't
There you go with you "romanticism" again
One minute it's a matter of opinion, the next a dismissal of the work of others
You really have to produce proof of your claims other than earliest publication dates

It is rapidly becoming my opinion that a group of desk-bound academics (who haven't done enough background work to merit the title "researchers") have decided to fill in the empty hours by coming up with yet another new theory by arbitrarily redefining folk song to include the dross of the commercial music industry

Sharp not a researcher this is as much utter nonsense as was describing Water's importance as being because he was a latecomer and among only a few
Sharp, as limited as his work might have been by his times and the fact he was a pioneer, was a scholar who actually examined what he collected and came to 'some conclusions" about what he found
It is distasteful and totally contrary to the friendly and co-operative attitude I have always experienced from fellow enthusiasts and researchers, to see a group of newbies tearing down the work of the people who gave us the songs we have taken so much pleasure and interest from - unprofessional, to say the least

"We have done so on many occasions "
You are being disingenuous in claiming you have explained why you have the hacks could have made our songs - I've just listed your feeble, on-the spot and somewhat pathetic excuses
None of my business but if I was another poster I would bitterly resent your implicating me in your claims - nobody but you has dragged up ill-thought-out excuses
You appear not even to regard these hacks as historically judh=ged producers of "dunghill" doggerel

You are not going to either withdraw or explain your downgrading of one of England's finest traditional singers - apologising for doing so seems beyond all expectation.
Your team really needs a few people who actually like and understand folk song

MacColl once told us in an interview that he believed folk song would only die if it fell into the hands of people who don't like or understand it and want to replace it with something else.
In the words of one of his songs "It's all happening now"
Jim