Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-05-26/Dispatches

A featured sound is a recording of a musical performance, an environmental field recording or a voice recording that has been chosen by the Wikipedia community as being among its best sound files, and that adds significantly to at least one article. Pharos and Phoenix2 created the project in August 2005 as an informal structure. Since then, it has developed into a project that sets the benchmark for Wikipedia's sound files.

February 2007 was a milestone in the creation of a formal set of featured sound criteria, leading to the first promotion within weeks. The criteria stated that a featured sound:

• is of high fidelity and technical quality;
• is available in the public domain or has a free license;
• adds value to an article, helping readers to understand it;
• has a good caption and image description page; and
• is accurate, supported by facts in the article or references cited on the image page.

In a major review of the criteria three months later, high fidelity and technical quality were expressed in terms of balance, reverberation, frequency response and stereophony, the requirement for musical performances was raised from "competent" to "of a high technical and artistic standard", and significantly more detailed requirements were laid out for the sound description page. Exceptions to the technical requirements for recordings made under extenuating circumstances were widened to include historical recordings. This is essentially the form of the current featured sound criteria.