WikiLeaks is a nonprofit website dedicated to leaking sensitive documents.

WikiLeaks was launched in 2006 by an international group of activists that included Julian Assange, the site’s current editor.

WikiLeaks is funded by anonymous private donors and does not accept government or corporate funding. The site temporarily shut down in early 2010 while asking for donations to cover its $600,000 annual budget, then did so again in late 2011 after several financial companies blocked many of its donations. It was reported to be close to running out of money in mid-2012 and ultimately received only $68,000 in donations in 2012, against $507,000 in expenses. In October 2012, it charged for access to a leak of U.S. presidential campaign documents. Later that year, a group named the Freedom of the Press Foundation formed with the goal of serving as a conduit for donations to WikiLeaks and other journalistic groups focused on government transparency.

Despite its name, WikiLeaks is not run as a wiki. The site has a few full-time staff members and numerous other contributors to verify and contextualize leaks. It is supposedly run in conjunction with a nine-member advisory board, though several board members have said they were unaware they were on it. The site has multiple servers around the world, with its primary server in Sweden, where journalists are prevented by law from revealing anonymous sources.

The site has posted more than a million leaked documents and videos, including a 2007 video of civilians being killed in the Iraq War, a Guantanamo Bay manual, a report revealing corruption in Kenya, and the so-called “Climategate” emails. In 2010, the site made four major releases: a video of military forces killing civilians in Iraq, documents on the war in Afghanistan, documents on the war in Iraq, and several thousand classified American diplomatic cables. WikiLeaks released the remainder of those diplomatic cables in 2011 after they were inadvertently made public online. The source of those four releases, U.S. Army Pfc. Chelsea Manning, formerly known as Bradley Manning, was held for more than three years before being convicted in July 2013 of several charges including theft and violating the Espionage Act, though she was acquitted of a more serious “aiding the enemy” charge. Manning was sentenced to 35 years in military prison for the leaks.

The site has also leaked other documents since then, including more than 2 million Syria-related emails in 2012. In 2013, it released a searchable database of 1.7 million already-public U.S. diplomatic cables from the 1970s.

WikiLeaks has been described as a successor to traditional accountability and investigative journalism. Its stated goal is to publish documents “alleging government and corporate misconduct,” and Assange has said that he sees his organization working to fill the gaps where journalists are either unable or unwilling to publish leaked information. He has also said he considers himself an advocate at least as much as a journalist.