Judging from what I can gather, it was called avant-folk long before freak folk.

You know that some genres (or sub-genres) are made up and weren't by the bands and fans at the time, like for example "proto-Punk." To paraphrase Richard Lloyd "Television didn't go around calling themselves a "proto-Punk" band. The word didn't even exist back then. "Neutral Milk Hotel describes themselves as "Fuzz-Folk" I'm not sure they ever considered themselves as Freak Folk.

You just said what I was talking about. But that doesn't mean they tags are only official if the tag wasbaround at the time. Freak Folk has even been practiced today, even if it started out as 5he in the 70's. And I'm theorize the name "freak folk" didn't come out until way later.

They're tags, I'm not sure they are all legitimate genres. If a handful of MBers tag bands as "Batlord Metal" on one of those sites does that make it "official?"

That wasn't a good analogy. I was talking about a tag becoming popular and common en0ugh.

Yes.

A genre is a genre if two people recognize it as such and can communicate between each other the style of music by using that genre descriptor. You wouldn't say Talk Talk aren't post-rock because they didn't call themselves that, the band doesn't determine the genre, their fans do.

Unpicking the strands of subgenres can be a pleasure in its own right, but in this case, I'm with Tristan Geoff:-
^ Yep, only three people have voted so far.

^ Absolutely there is Tristan!! Where have you been?? Check out these threads or I'm gonna have to get out the guns, the headbang and the soapbox smileys!

http://www.musicbanter.com/prog-psyc...glosphere.html
http://www.musicbanter.com/country-f...und-world.html

So if two idiots are talking to each other about a band on Youtube and totally get the genre wrong, by your standards it has to be legitimately right because two people recognized it as such? That criterion would breed chaos.

I haven't considered Talk Talk as a post-Punk band, and there are a few reasons for that. They don't immediately sound like other post-Punk bands, e.g. The Monochrome Set, Gang of Four, or Wire. Most of which came out during post-Punk formative years around '77, '78. I haven't seen them refer to as "post Punk." They came out after the first wave of post-Punk bands, and were more contemporaries of New Wave, & Synth Pop bands of the 80s. If I knew for a fact that Talk Talk did not think themselves as a post-Punk band I would take that into consideration. Knowing the artist perspective give a better understanding of their music, more so than what fans label them as.

I listen to bands for their music, not because they labeled within a specific genre, and certainly not because what people tagged them as on RYM.

It takes a hell of a lot more people than two.