Some of the answers were right on! It’s better to ask someone you know or someone who knows someone you know in the community the potential date lives in. References can be used for basic info: how many siblings, what do parents do, how tall is he or she-the rest you have to take with a grain of salt. To the nonreferences I would ask about midos, good idea as said above to ask if the person is calm, has a happy demeanor, level of frumkeit. Chesed is hard to judge since, as someone correctly pointed out, the best chesed is done quietly-if you boast about it and everyone knows it, you may do chesed and be a baal gavah. Now here’s a novel thought: why go thru so much initial checking before the first date-if the boy and girl are old enough to date and get married, don’t their own instincts count too?
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