I think it’s important to have trustworthy information about validators and especially recognition for the public good contributions. I don’t think it’s wise to dictate how any organization operates when there’s no way to enforce that. Once the gov module updates come in the Rho upgrade, the Cosmos Hub Community Pool can make delegations. That kind of delegation can be enforced with the governance module and I think should be the focus if you’re looking for enforceable delegations.
The criteria listed is valuable and I know that it would likely overlap with any public transparent delegation policy (which ICF has had near the top of the to do list for a very long time but unfortunately other critical items keep topping it) but I don’t think there is any reason to attempt to force brick and mortar entities to follow something that can’t actually be enforced. I think that collecting public data about validators and making it more accessible is valuable work. I know Thyborg from twitter is working on one such endeavor (link). In order to avoid bias i think it’s important that there is never one “canonical” approved validator list either. That would be too easy to corrupt.
Jacob, my suggestion would be that you use the data you collected to make a validator ranking system that incorporates all of these qualities and provide it to the community in addition to Thyborgs. Maybe cosmonauts and institutions like ICF or Ignite will save time by using one or both of those lists, maybe they will take input from them, and maybe block explorers will incorporate the ratings like Michelin stars for users to choose. I believe that would satisfy the core issue and doesn’t lead to a centralized “who’s in” whitelist of validators or any attempt to control individuals or entities that have no legal obligation to manage their funds according to the cosmos hub governance system.