Wikipedia:Featured sound candidates/Criteria proposal


 * 1) Is Public Domain or free.
 * 2) *The recording and its subject must be available in the public domain or under a free license. Non-free recordings and musical performances that use texts and scores under fair use are ineligible.
 * 3) Is notable.
 * 4) *The recording must be Notable (WP:N), either because the content of the recording is notable in some way. A standard way to know if a particular piece is notable is to see if a page has or could be written about it.
 * 5) Is among Wikipedia's best work.
 * 6) *The recording should add encyclopedic value to an article, and adds to the reader's appreciation of that subject:
 * 7) *The recording is used in one or more articles. It is preferable to wait a reasonable period of time (at least 7 days) after the recording is added to the article before nominating it, though this may be ignored in obvious cases, such as replacing a low-quality recording with a high quality one.
 * 8) Has a good caption.
 * 9) *The recording is displayed with a descriptive, informative and complete caption
 * 10) *The complete caption is succinct, but allows the listener to adequately identify the recording and its subject.
 * 11) *The description provided on the featured sound candidate page should be appropriate for use in the featured sound portal, and puts the sound file in context.
 * 12) *Properly identifies the main subject, including Latin and technical names where applicable; for a musical performance, the name and years of the composer (and the arranger, where relevant), the year of composition (and the arrangement, where relevant), the name(s) of the performer(s) or, for an ensemble, the name of the group and, where relevant, the conductor and soloist (where information is unavailable, such as for some historical recordings, provide as much as is known).
 * 13) *States the most relevant meta-detail (such as date, location, event, version, recordist, producer, record company etc where known)
 * 14) *In addition, the Sound description page should contain the following:
 * 15) **Where known, a list of any editing that has been applied to the excerpt that was not in the original, such as noise reduction or click removal (obvious fade ups and fade downs at the start and end need not be listed).
 * 16) **Where known, the date and venue of the recording and the name(s) of the recordist(s), producer(s), and/or record company.
 * 17) **Where a recording has been released into the public domain or has been transferred to a free license, the name of the original owner and the date of release/transfer, if this information is recoverable.
 * 18) **Additional documentation, such as a transcript or a musical score, can be useful, but is not required.
 * 19) **Proper licensing templates for each component of the recording. Recordings of nature sounds and a limited number or other pieces need only one template, as only one party had a significant hand in the creation of the file. Most musical recordings, however, need at least two templates, one for the original composition and another for the performance. The templates should be labeled to indicate which component they refer to. See this Featured Sound for an example of how this would look.
 * 20) Is of high technical quality:
 * 21) * Generally free of technical faults such as unintended noise,distortion, and sonic and compression artifacts).
 * 22) ** In modern recordings, the quality of the audio-engineering should have a high standard of high fidelity.
 * 23) ** Historical recordings should be of reasonable quality for their age. Exceptions can be made for a notable recording when it is unlikely that any better-quality free copy of the same recording could be found.
 * 24) Musical performances are of a high artistic standard.
 * 25) *It is free from obvious errors in performance, such as "wrong notes", out of tune notes, or clumsy phrasing.
 * 26) *It is a "typical" performance of a work. The performance should not deviate substantially from the music as written, because then it has limited EV and cannot illustrate the subject truthfully.
 * 27) **In some rare cases a performance is notable for being atypical. If this is the case it must be mentioned in the nomination, file description page, and the text of the article where the sound appears.
 * 28) *Although prior knowledge of the composition in question is not essential when assessing a recording of a piece of music, such knowledge can help to weigh up the interpretation of the piece; it is certainly easier to assess the performance of a work you know well. Any Featured Sound recording of a very well-known piece of music will inevitably be compared to professional recordings, so while WP is not able to offer actual professional recordings, the recording in question should be capable of being held up as WP's best work.
 * 29) Videos should be of a high quality, however:
 * 30) *The audio quality should always be superior in the case of historically important recordings (US Presidential addresses for example) or both the audio and visual content should be of a high quality with minor or negligible blemishes.
 * 31) *Where it is not possible for the audio quality to be at its best, but where the visual content is at a high/optimal level then the file would be more appropriately suited for Featured Pictures, as long as it satisfies the FP criteria.
 * 32) *Where the video quality is not of the highest quality but the audio quality is clear and lacking in faults, then the file would be more appropriate for FS, as long as it satisfies the FS criteria.