Resources.

A growing library of the best resources for digital community leaders: things to read, watch, listen to, do, and play. Curated by the DLC, free to explore.

Read

Articles, reports, books, and guides worth your time.

NEWSLETTERS

Community Dev Newsletter

(Victoria Tran)

Monthly insight into games marketing, social, and community management, with actionable tips, a skill-testing question, and a roundup of resources for each issue.

Community Manager Breakfast

(Evan Hamilton)

A weekly hand-curated pick of three of the best reads on community building, drawn from across the web.

The Community Career Upgrade

(Nikita Heyland)

A LinkedIn newsletter on building and advancing a career in community work.

Everything in Moderation

(Ben Whitelaw & Alice Hunsberger)

Twice-weekly need-to-know news and analysis on content moderation, platform policy, and internet regulation.

The Community Nerd

(Jillian Bejtlich)

Digs into the science of communities, with deeper insights especially as the social landscape shifts.

BOOKS

Mastering Community Management: Chaos, Compassion, and Connections in Games

(Victoria Tran)

A step-by-step, real-world guide to designing online game communities from pre-launch through post-launch, with a practical framework for building kinder, more cohesive spaces.

Man Up: The New Misogyny and the Rise of Violent Extremism

(Cynthia Miller-Idriss, PhD)

A leading extremism scholar traces how online and everyday misogyny fuels radicalization and violence—and offers strategies parents, educators, and counselors can use to push back. Sharp context for anyone moderating communities where these dynamics surface.

People Powered: How Communities Can Supercharge Your Business, Brand, and Teams

A practical, business-facing framework for community strategy, with templates for mapping out member personas and choosing the right approach depending on your context.

The Art of Community: Building the New Age of Participation

Bacon’s earlier book, and the foundation People Powered builds on — more focused on the why behind community building, laying out the core principles before getting into tactics.

The Business of Belonging: How to Make Community Your Competitive Advantage

A business-strategy book on its surface, but grounded in the psychology of belonging and participation — practical insight that translates well to running a community directly.

RESEARCH ARTICLES

Community codes of conduct as proactive intervention for toxicity in games

(Rachel Kowert)

A research article discussing what we know about the design, implementation, and accessibility of community codes of conduct in gaming environments and how do codes of conduct influence player behavior. This review concludes with evidence-based recommendations for industry practice, synthesized into the EFFECT Framework — a practical tool distilling six core evidence-based design principles for developing community codes of conduct that actively shape community culture.

OTHER

Other posts are coming soon!

Watch

Talks, sessions, and videos, including our own.

CHANNELS

DLC Leadership Program YouTube

(DLC Leadership Program)

Instructor intros and course trailers from the DLC curriculum — a quick way to preview what each module covers before enrolling.

Psychgeist YouTube

(Rachel Kowert, Psychgeist)

Research-driven breakdowns of the psychology of games for a general audience — bridges the gap between moral panic and the actual evidence base.

GDC VAULT

Charm Your Communities

(Victoria Tran)

GDC 2021. How small, intentional moments build loyalty and connection in game communities — concrete examples drawn from Innersloth’s own community work.

A Moderation Guide for Successful Brand Livestreams and Digital Events

(Victoria Tran & Kat Lo)

GDC 2023. Code-of-conduct planning, escalation action matrices, and the test runs most teams skip — a practical playbook for moderating live brand events.

The Toxicity Tax: Why the Future of Trust and Safety is Leadership Led

(Rachel Kowert)

GDC 2026. New cross-market research on the financial cost of toxicity and the introduction of the Trust & Safety Triforce — the case that policy and tooling alone can’t scale T&S without investing in leadership and education as the third pillar.

From Independence to Intervention: What Players Really Want from Community Safety

(Rachel Kowert, Mike Pappas, Savannah Badalich, Maria Tamellini, Matthew Soeth — presented by GameSafe)

GDC 2026. What players themselves say they want from community safety systems — a panel bringing together research, platform, and tooling perspectives.

TED TALKS

The Price of Shame

(Monica Lewinsky)

A firsthand account of online harassment at scale and a call to become “up-standers” rather than bystanders — one of the most-watched TED talks on online culture.

What we're getting wrong about teens and tech

(Candice Odgers)

Decades of data on teens tell a different story than the “smartphones are destroying a generation” narrative. Violence, alcohol use, and pregnancy are at historic lows, and social media may not be the culprit for mental health problems it’s often blamed for, a useful counterweight for leaders navigating panic-driven pressure around youth and digital platforms of all kinds.

Listen

Podcasts and audio for community leaders.

Safety is [REDACTED]

Conversations with content experts, technologists, and researchers doing the work of building healthier online spaces—on the premise that improving online safety takes all of us.

Ctrl-Alt-Speech

(Mike Masnick [Techdirt] & Ben Whitelaw [Everything in Moderation])

A weekly news podcast making sense of the latest in online speech: trust & safety, content moderation, regulation, court rulings, and new tech, usually with an expert guest.

Community Signal

(Patrick O’Keefe)

A long-running show for experienced community professionals across audience engagement, moderation, trust & safety, and more—built on the idea that community is a strategy, not just a set of social tools.

In Before the Lock

(Erica Kuhl & Brian Oblinger)

Two veterans on community, customer experience, and leadership at scale.

Trust Issues

Conversations on trust and safety and the realities of content moderation.

Good Game Club

(Jude Ower & Mathias Gredal Nørvig)

Conversations about gaming’s positive impact—mental health, learning, safety, and raising healthier young players.

Community Conversations

(The Community Roundtable)

Discussions with practitioners on the craft and business of community management.

Safe Space — Talking Trust and Safety

(Cassie Coccaro & Pailes Halai)

This show explores the human side of trust & safety through the personal journeys of the leaders, thinkers, and builders working to protect online communities.

Do

Practical tools, templates, exercises, and events you can take part in.

TOOLKITS

GS Defender

Enterprise-grade Trust and Safety infrastructure for Discord communities. Protect your community with advanced identity verification, raid protection, ban evasion detection and much more.

Mental Health Resources for T&S

(Alice Hunsberger)

A field-tested toolkit for moderators and community leaders who encounter harmful content. In-the-moment coping steps, proactive resilience habits, and a self-care checklist drawn from vicarious trauma research.

Tools for Trust & Safety

When you need a quick second opinion, an activity for your team, or a way to work through a policy draft, these tools are here for you.

Digital Thriving Playbook

(Thriving in Games Group)

A free, research-backed playbook of practical guidance for building and designing healthier online communities.

TRAININGS

GamerSafer Academy

A free, hands-on curriculum for Minecraft and Discord moderators, community managers, and platform operators who want to detect high-risk behavior, respond appropriately, and handle serious safety cases with more confidence.

Digital Bystander: Community Moderator Training

(Christchurch Call Foundation)

A free course from the Catalyst Project (as part of the Christchurch Call Foundation) built for online community moderators and trust and safety practitioners. Centered on online gender-based violence, it uses a digital bystander intervention model to help participants recognize hybrid harms in their communities and apply a framework for responding effectively.

EVENTS

Game Developers Conference (GDC) / GDC Festival of Gaming

(March · San Francisco, CA)

The games industry’s flagship conference — primarily focused on development, but with a substantial community management and trust & safety track (including the Community Management Summit) covering moderation, player safety, and digital leadership.

Trust & Safety Summit

(March · London, UK)

Europe’s largest independent T&S event, aimed at senior leaders operationalizing trust and safety — covering team structure, regulation, and embedding safety into product development.

All Things in Moderation (ATiM)

(May/June · Online)

The annual global gathering for “humans who moderate” — moderators, community managers, researchers, policymakers, and technologists sharing knowledge across a two-day virtual program, with sessions available live and on-demand.

TrustCon

(July · San Francisco, CA)

The largest global conference dedicated specifically to trust and safety professionals, with workshops, panels, and lightning talks covering the practice of T&S from policy to product to professional wellbeing.

Play

Games and interactive experiences that teach community and safety in action.

A game can teach the trade-offs of this work faster than any explainer. Both of these put you in the decision-maker’s seat.

Moderator Mayhem

(Engine with Copia & Leveraged Play)

Step into the moderator’s seat and make rapid-fire content decisions under time pressure, with a manager weighing in and appeals piling up. It drives home, viscerally, how hard frontline moderation actually is.

Trust & Safety Tycoon

(Copia & Leveraged Play)

Run the trust & safety team at a fast-growing social network and make the tough calls on policy, moderation dilemmas, and where to invest, all while balancing what your team, your company, and your users need. It’s a quick way to feel why this work is so full of trade-offs—there’s rarely a clean right answer.