Before joining an ICO project, you should see the overview of that project. See Whitepaper, team, price of tokens, links, and information that are clearly public, ICO rating indicators are appreciated by the community to avoid fake teams.
Agreed, i'm sure most of whale investors always check all these important points too. Checking the team behind the project, whitepaper, what product is the project about and many else. To find a good ICOs is not that easy though because there are so many ICOs out there.