For Tibetan tradition, if you don't want to waste time (a matter of decades to lifetime), focused on Nyingma and dzogchen only. Make sure the teacher have solid background and authentic lineage.
For someone new to buddhism, don't waste your time judging teacher based on your personal preference, or what you feel when meet the teacher. A good teacher is not strong at public relation, contrary is usually the case with teacher with questionable background and intent. A teacher with few words, or sometime act opposite to what one would expect, does not mean anything. In other words, its very hard to judge a teacher other than his background and list of authoritative persons behind him (in the mist of ignorance, this background is assurance that the teacher is at least qualified). Unless one is already more advanced in buddhism, where it is possible to spot a teacher from within mist of unlikely places. Also for gaining initiation and transmission, an authentic lineage is more important than the teacher's style of teaching, as you would spent most of your time practicing the teaching after receiving the authorization, than spending time with the teacher. Unless you are intending on serving a certain teacher full time, but then you are not the only one who can decide whether the arrangement is possible.
In my opinion, an unmoderated buddhist newsgroup such as alt.religion.buddhism is ideal for buddhist discussion and dharma debate, they have been active even before 1998 when I first involved up to the present. There are later formation of moderated forum with authoritative newsgroup figure (such as Namdrol) as mentioned, but discussion tends to be very limited as nyingma and dzogchen is not an open teaching.
