Learn About LGBT Laws in Any Country Using DuckDuckGo

Equaldex is now integrated directly into DuckDuckGo, the search engine that doesn’t track you. Searching for “LGBT rights” and almost any country name will surface Equaldex’s extensive data on LGBT rights.

DuckDuckGo is a search engine that promotes user privacy. With its growing popularity, its currently getting over 300 million searches a month. 

DuckDuckGo also has a active volunteer developer community, letting its users build extensions directly into the search engine. DuckDuckGo’s Equaldex integration was built by a talented volunteer developer Chris Wilson.

Try out some example queries:

• LGBT rights China
  
• Gay rights Brazil
• LGBT rights Canada

Equaldex Launches New LGBT Organizations Feature

Equaldex, the crowdsourced LGBT rights knowledge base, introduced a new feature making it easier to find the LGBT organizations making a difference in each country and region.

The new LGBT organizations feature provides a database of organizations across the globe. Organizations are listed on each country page on Equaldex (example: LGBT rights in Israel) allowing users to find the organizations who are fighting for LGBT rights, or providing resources for LGBT people in that region.

Equaldex now offers a feature to browse all LGBT organizations, as well as a timeline of LGBT organization was founded. 

Organizations are also listed on Equaldex’s timeline of LGBT rights on each year’s page (example: 1990 in LGBT rights).

Equaldex’s organizations database is still growing. If your favourite organization is missing, please suggest it!

Tumblr adds LGBTQ section to new “Spotlight” directory

Equalitopia and a number of other LGBTQ blogs have received invites to be featured in the LGBTQ section of Tumblr’s new Spotlight directory, which replaces the old directory. Upon its launch, it did not include an “LGBTQ” category.

Aside from the new look and lack of user recommendations, the new directory is very similar to the old. A few categories were removed while a numer of new ones were added.

Currently featured in the LGBTQ directory are: I’m A PFLAG Mom, Art of Transliness, genderqueer, TRANS, KNOW Homo, Gender Magick, You Know You’re Trans* When…, Soffa Support, homohelp, Queer Secrets, the gang’s all QUEER, Fuck Yeah FTMs of Color, HOMOGROUND, LGBTQ GMHA, Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme, and Equalitopia.

Users can recommend categories or blogs to be featured by emailing editors@tumblr.com.

What do you think of the new directory?

(Equalitopia’s directory image resource via SneakyTomato)

Tumblr launches new tag system, #LGBTQ featured

Today, Tumblr expanded their tag system, creating a new way to discover content. Among the listed 25 “popular tags” is #LGBTQ.

The system highlights Tumblr’s popular tags and allows users to browse content among that tag. The tags are switched out periodically based popularity, and some high-traffic tags become trending tags—for example, "Egypt“ and "Libya.”

What sets this apart from systems like Twitter’s Trending Topics is that the content listed under these tags are chosen by selected “editors.” These editors are users who are chosen by a semi-automated process. According to the FAQ, Tumblr’s bot identifies users who post popular content about a topic. Users from this list are then selected to be editors. Every 1-4 weeks, editors are switched out.

The new tag system is an innovative way to discover content and crowdsource the task of featuring content, and incentivize that process.

Tumblr explains that this new feature fixes the limitation of the Tumblr Directory:

“It’s hard to organize Tumblr blogs by topic. A single one of your blogs may include your personal updates, your art, your opinions, and a YouTube video of a cat speaking Japanese, all in a single day. This has been a real limitation of the current Tumblr Directory. So, for the last few weeks we’ve been experimenting with some brand new tools for exploring Tumblr.”

Currently, editors of the #LGBTQ tag are imaylikemychardonnay, kristinnoeline, hunsonisgroovy and dannielle. Top contributors (users who have been featured the most by editors) are rising, franfine, everyoneisgay, sincerelyconcerned and fuckyeahlgbt.