User:Major Bloodnok/FS criteria expanded

This is Major Bloodnok's attempt to explain my interpretation of some of the Featured Sound Criteria - see WP:FSC. It is not policy, but merely my attempt, however limited, to explain some aspect of Featured material assessment.

Assessment Criteria

There are 4 Assessment Criteria under which sounds should be assessed for Featured Status, none of which require specialist knowledge:

Assessment Criteria 1 - Public Domain - 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 under fair use are ineligible.

Assessment Criteria 2 - Notability - The recording must be Notable (WP:N), either because of the performer is notable, or because the content of the recording is notable in some way.

Assessment Criteria 3 - Encyclopedic Value - It should add encyclopedic value to an article or series of articles, and should help to illustrate the subject of these articles for the reader.

Assessment Criteria 4 - High Quality - It should be of high quality, and exemplify our best work. N.B. This is the assessment objective which can be the most problematic for editors, because quality in many ways is in the ear of the beholder.

Explanation of the Assessment Criteria:

• AC 1 - Public Domain or Free is essential for all Featured Sounds on WP.

• AC 2 - Notability is a key feature of WP, and FS is no exception. There is room for debate over a particular subject or person's notability, however.

• AC 3 - Encyclopedic Value is another key feature of media on WP; in the first instance it should be up to the nominating editor to try and add recordings to relevant articles as far as reasonably possible. The recording should be documented as well as possible:

1. Role. The file helps readers to understand the topic of an article. The file is used in at least one article, and adds to the reader's appreciation of that subject.
2. Caption. 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.
3. Sound description page. The page contains an extended description of the file, including (as far as is possible):
   • (i) 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;
   • (ii) the date and venue of the recording, where known;
   • (iii) the name(s) of the recordist(s), producer(s), and/or record company, where known.
   • (iv) 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);
   • (vi) 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); and
   • (vii) 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.
   • Additional documentation, such as a transcript or a musical score, can be useful, but is not required.
   • (viii) 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.

• AC 4 - High Quality is, of course important, but it may be felt in certain circumstances that the notability of a recording's subject (for example a well-known speech, or a particularly well-known piece of music performed by a notable person) can outweigh and supersede any problems or low quality inherent in that recording. For example, Kitten on the Keys was a record that was very popular in 1921. In the assessment period of the 1921 recording, some users pointed out the technical limitations of the recording (including scratches and noise on the low-fidelity recording) and other users noted that the performance was not of high standard in some areas (especially some uncertainty in the tempo of the performance), the community felt that the notability of the record outweighed its limitations, and the recording was therefore made a Featured Sound.

1. • (a) The recording should be generally free of technical faults such as unintended noise,distortion, and sonic and compression artifacts).
     • (i) In modern recordings, the quality of the audio-engineering should have a high standard of high fidelity.
     • (ii) Historical recordings are of reasonable quality for their age. Exceptions can be made for significance when it is unlikely that any better-quality free copy of the same recording could be found.
   • (b) Musical performances are of a high artistic standard. Editors should bear in mind the following when assessing musical performances:
     • (i) Is it free from obvious errors in performance, such as "wrong notes", out of tune notes, or clumsy phrasing? If not, is the performance overall diminished by any shortcomings in the performance?
     • (ii) Could the performance be regarded as a "typical" performance of a work? If the performance of the work departs from what the composer specified, because of instrumentation or performance choices, editors may feel that the recording could not become a Featured Sound as it may give a misleading impression of a piece to the reader. In some rare cases a performance is notable for being atypical. If this is the case it must me mentioned in the nomination, file description page, and the text of the article where the sound appears.
     • (iii) Knowledge of the composition 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, can the recording in question reasonably be held up as WP's best work?