I would say any poem that lives up to any of the traditions of Sonnets established by the great poets of the past, "Petrarchan" "Shakespearean" "Spenserian", etc.. is a sonnet. In other words, it needs to have a meter, line-length, and rhyme-scheme and volta according to the tradition it follows. You can't write a "Shakespearean Sonnet" if you don't follow the form that makes it "Shakespearean".
The best options for the sonnet are already, for the most part, established. Do you really think you can come up with something better than the traditions established by the best poets of the past? If you don't follow the established forms, you will most likely come up with something that looks like unintentional ignorance about them or failure to follow the traditions well, or else an intentional, lazy disregard, or gimmicky freeversy, fiddling-around.
Of course many people may accept anything that vaguely resembles any form of the sonnet as a sonnet. But what kind of achievement is that? Your sonnet gets to be a sonnet because it vaguely resembles a sonnet. Great. That's not much better than any 15 syllable threeliner winning the label "Haiku", or any example of prose with line breaks being "free verse".
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