Still sitting here as a semi-outsider, I'm just musing that an activity that involves informal socialising, enjoying the crack/craic, often getting a bit pissed with your mates, singing old songs and changing things a bit because you can't quite remember it all or like it better your way/your dad's way, same with old tunes, doing your own thing with people of similar sentiment, etc., needs a bunch of academics in a committee room to anguish over a definition of what we're doing/should be doing/shouldn't really be doing if we want to call it what they see as "folk..."

Anyone care to define classical music? Off to the committee room then! :-)

Defining it won't preserve it. That just puts people off. What preserves it is people having fun with it.