I just solo new coins. That is the way it should be. Pool operators shouldn't get into the initial instamine imo. That should be just us miners, no one else.
As for identifying noob pools. If its a pool without a familiar name I just assume its some kid setting up a pool on his home internet connection. I never touch those, do not trust them. Go with big pools that have multiple coins, have been around for a while and no complaints, lots of miners on them. These new popups could be scams. Scams everywhere.
Here is the problem. A new coins come up. It introduces a pool. Over 100 users signed up. What am i going to do now? I cant solo mine against all that hash. They will find all the blocks.
Here is the other catch now. I just had a pool with 8 other coins tell me that due to high user ratio. The pool close down and now i get a few coins. Where the pool found most of the blocks for 4 hours. What do i do now? How can i figure out whats going on. ? I feel like were are allowing this kind of scam go unnoticed.