Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-03-09/Dispatches

On February 27, Featured sounds reached 100 Featured sounds, through the promotion of six sounds. While no one sound was declared the 100th, the six sounds that were promoted were:


 * nominated by Shoemaker's Holiday.


 *  nominated by Shoemaker's Holiday.


 *  nominated by Zginder.


 *  nominated by Durova.


 *  nominated by Durova.


 *  nominated by Shoemaker's Holiday.

A Featured sound is a sound file that is of such quality that it can represent some of Wikipedia's best work (see related story). In order to be featured, it must meet the criteria for Featured sounds. These criteria includes high encyclopedic value, combined with good quality for the time period in which the sound was recorded.

Two parts of the criteria are not as recognized, but are as important as quality and encyclopedic value.
 * Free license
 * All featured sounds must be under a free license. Just as Featured pictures must be under a free license, sounds cannot be under Fair use. Many Featured sounds are licensed under either PD-old or PD-USGov. Sounds which are older than the life of the author plus 100 years can be licensed under PD-old. This includes sounds that have been digitally restored from a form of media which would satisfy PD-old in itself. Some Featured sounds are recordings of US presidential speeches. Because they are a work of the US federal government, they can be licensed under PD-USGov.


 * Sound description page
 * Every featured sound must have a well documented description page that explains the sound in detail. It must include:
 * A brief description of the subject. A sentence or two is usually sufficient, but there should be enough information to adequately identify both the recording and what the recording is of.
 * The date and venue of the recording, where known.
 * The name(s) of the recordist(s), producer(s), and/or record company, where known.
 * 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).
 * 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.
 * The name of the original owner and the date of release/transfer, if this information is recoverable.

While the Featured sounds process has received more attention in the past few months, it is still in need of both contributors and reviewers. In order for the process to grow, a larger community is required. Low numbers of reviewers have occasionally caused long delays—sometimes months old. Nominations are being made fairly steadily, but most of them are made by people who have been active in the process for a long time. In order for the process to flourish, new input is necessary. There are multiple ways you can contribute.
 * Review some sounds – Most nominations receive 2–4 comments. More reviews would help establish stronger consensus.
 * Nominate sounds – It is easy to find free sound files on the Internet. Sites such as millercenter.org, various presidential archive sites, and archive.org all provide sounds which are released under a free license. Or, if you have old records laying around your house, see if you can find a person in your town who can make old forms of media into digital files. To convert them to Ogg, there is a free program called Audacity which makes the process easy (and can also provide certain aesthetic effects).
 * Help with sound restoration – Contact Shoemaker's Holiday, who can get you started.