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Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and it goes without saying that our goal is to produce a quality encyclopedia. The question is, how? In the early years of Wikipedia there was no real answer to this question for the obvious reason that there is no one right way; indeed, there may be an infinite number of right ways, impossible to codify. The reason for this lack of a clear and simple answer gets to the heart of what makes Wikipedia different from other encyclopedias: ours is produced through a wiki process—an open, practically anarchic social environment.