Yeah, over mis-using the term hard fork will create perfect chances for scammers, who will readily - of course - use the term for their shitty clone forked projects.
Before using the term hard fork, I think there are two main criteria should be taken into consideration:
1> Purposes of the event (I got those three ones below from the new-source there:
https://cointelegraph.com/bitcoin-cash-for-beginners/what-is-hard-fork#terms-you-should-know)
1. To fix important security risks found in older versions
2. To add new functionality
3. To reverse transactions.
If the purpose is compromising open source code of others and use them to create new coins, it should be called as clone fork, not hard fork.
2> The separation of core team or communities or not (for projects that have full control of their core team, communities will not play a role in the criteria).
I think they don't have intention to think about that, they just used a wrong term and people thought about it as something that will generate a new coin. And as for that, the scammers rode that hype and two of them were already busted. Yes, the market almost didn't respond about that and I think it's likely to see more of it in the future and it's good to see that they now consider using 'upgrade' instead of fork term.
I don't think so.
Fork = upgrade
I totally agreed with you.
a breaking change in the protocol (an update)
and, it should be sticked with one supplementary criteria, a separation or un-consensus of core team or communities (for community-driven projects) on the update/ upgrade.
And it's really unfortunate people think that with the term fork. Because, before all these shit coins were created from minority communities and scams, people still understood fork to mean what it was: a breaking change in the protocol (an update).
Now the "crypto community" has been crazy diluted with weak-handed muggles who are just here following hype...and can't seem to distinguish an upgrade from a contentious hard fork.
I created a topic for the discussion.
You all can join it there:
Upgrade or hard-fork? Is it time to stop over-misusing the term hard-fork? 
