Thanks for contributing to the Witness awareness with this post.

Choosing which witness to vote for kind be tricky, some people might not even be bothered because of the time it could take to learn about the witnesses before the vote. Vote decision criteria can also depend on who you are, like for example if you are a regular user, an investor, another witness etc...

As a witness myself, I usually try to spread my vote between new / established witnesses and update my votes once in a while based on what new I learn about currently voted witnesses etc... One of my criteria is whether I had contact with the witness before and how helpful they were helping me becoming a better witness. But that one can be "overridden" by other events. It's complicated but everyone needs to come up with their own way of choosing witnesses to vote for.

Your list of criteria above is a good starting point but everything needs to be flexible. For example (and it's probably arguable), being active on the blockchain. Some of witnesses might not be active but their contributions to the blockchain might be important. Not everyone has social skills, so they might not want to post or comment that regularly but their technical skills can be very high and their contributions as a witness can be important for the stability and security of the network.