New to RPoL and TRPGs
Yeah...I have a kind of hierarchy of preferences when I search for games...I'll look for games with systems I'm familiar with, first off...I may or may not worry about genre, most of the games I've been in have had a dominant theme but have dabbled a little bit in multiple genres, so that isn't as high a priority for me, but it's something I can see just looking at the game ad.
Then I look at setting and general plot. If these don't interest me, I won't try to join the game, even if it's a system with which I'm familiar...but if a setting/plot sounds intriguing enough, I will try out a new system.
Next, I look at the GMs writing style. This is important to me because some people have such poor spelling and/or grammar that it takes a fair bit of effort to figure out what they're actually trying to say. Again, this won't necessarily chase me away from a game that sounds really interesting...but if I'm on the fence about it, this is enough to make me say 'no thanks.'
And, finally, I look at the GM expectations...what is the expected minimum posting rate? How complex is the RTJ (Request To Join) procedure that they've set up? How picky are they about how complex posts should be? Etc...
Those criteria aren't always easy to understand, and it actually took me a few years of playing on here to kind of develop a standard (and, even now, it still shifts for whatever reason, so my tastes in games has a visceral variable...all other things being equal, I follow my gut...)