I personally am thinking that our trust criteria should/could just be: operators trusted by a Privacy Guides team member.
To give you an example, I have met Seth (for Privacy) in person before, and I would be comfortable listing High-Performance Monero Nodes | sethforprivacy.com
It’s a little more web-of-trust-y than verifiable by readers, but I don’t really know how else we would handle this, and I think info about who current team members trust is still more helpful than directing people to monero.fail which lists 240+ random nodes.
And web-of-trust isn’t terrible, I don’t think.
Of course, there would still also be technical criteria that would be verifiable by readers to prevent it from being a free-for-all.
I am interested in hearing everyone’s thoughts about this approach though, and alternative ideas if you have any.