Information on ICO projects was collected, including white papers, website information, the GitHub repository at ICO, and the founding team.
Yes, the first thing to check is the
white paper. It can often happen that the white paper is poorly written. This by itself speaks a lot. I also tend to look for misprints. If you find mistakes, like typos or factual mistakes, it could be a sign of a sloppy project and a red flag.
Taking a look at
GitHub, if it's an open source project, is another good advice. In particular, you would want to check the number of commits of the developers team. That is, check how active they are.
And finally, check the
people behind the ICO. Check their past history. Did they have any other ICO's in the past? How successful those ICO's were?
In addition to the above...
I would find the coin on a forum and read about it there.
Also post in this forum and ask other people what they think about it.