What are featured media?
- All featured media should:
- Be Wikipedia's best work. They should represent what Wikipedia offers that is unique on the Internet.
- Add value to an article as befits an encyclopedia and help complete readers' understanding of an article in ways other media in the article do not.
- Have a free license. They should be available in the public domain or under a free license. Wikipedia:Fair use media are not allowed.
- In particular, a featured image should:
- Be a photograph, diagram, map, graph, image, or animation.
- Be of high quality. It should be sharp, with pleasing colour balance, contrast, and brightness, and it should be free of compression artifacts (such as in highly packed jpg files), burned-out highlights, graininess, and other distracting factors. (Note: Due to technical limitations at the time of capture, historically significant images are generally excepted from this rule.)
- Be of a high resolution. It should be of sufficiently high resolution to allow quality reproductions: generally at least 1000 pixels in resolution in width or height, unless it is animated or of historical significance.
- Be pleasing to the eye. It should be taken or created in a manner which best illustrates the subject of the image. The picture should make a reader want to know more.
- In particular, featured sounds should:
- Be music, "sound portrait"-type illustrations of articles, or historical recordings. Spoken Wikipedia articles are ineligible.
- Be of high quality. Recordings should be of high fidelity and technical quality. (Note: Recordings, such as historical recordings, taken under extenuating circumstances can be excepted from this rule.)