As a newbie, I look at whether a project is "reliable" or not, and now I mainly focus on three essentials: GitHub, audit reports, and multi-signature upgrades.

GitHub isn't about how fancy it looks, but whether people have been working seriously recently, if issues are being responded to, and not just a bunch of forks sitting there like an exhibition...
I can't understand the details of audit reports either, so I just look at the conclusions and the list of fixes, and I fear those "known risks: reliance on administrator goodwill" being ignored as if nothing's wrong.
Multi-signature is more straightforward: how many keys, who they belong to, whether they can be changed, if there's a delay after changes—otherwise, honestly, I can't sleep knowing rules can be changed with one click at any time.
Recently, on-chain data tools and tags have been criticized for lagging or misleading, so I don't really trust "certain address = certain organization" type of claims; I prefer cross-verifying across multiple sources.
Oh, and I encountered refresh, retry, and queuing issues again on the testnet, clicking confirm feels as light as a cat's paw, but I still feel nervous inside.
That's it for now, I'll learn slowly.