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I remember suddenly hearing the verb "judge" a lot in high school from girls. "She was judging me!" "You're being really judgy!" etc. and I was baffled by the usage. My internal reaction was something like... uh, yes? Everyone's judging everyone about everything all the time? Subconsciously most of the time, even? I understood that the girls were not trying to stop others from "judging" per se (since presumably they themselves often made knee-jerk and subconscious judgements about others) -- they simply wanted immunity from criticism about their choices (bad boyfriend, questionable fashion, low status friends, etc). I remember feeling unconvinced by their appeals against "judging" but at the time I couldn't put my finger on why. Nor could anyone else, so it was an effective tactic to immediately shut down any criticism (cf. "you're being inappropriate").
Americans are taught from a young age that we "shouldn't judge a book by its cover," that we should "judge by the content of their character," that we "ought to walk a mile in their shoes," and so on. This stems from a belief in an obscure nameless virtue that's not quite captured by the term "tolerance." The best name for it I've seen (sadly from a writer whose name I cannot remember) is "indiscriminateness." It's not enough to tolerate your neighbors weird facial piercings/taste in movies/cooking/religion -- to simply let them enjoy those things without trying to stop them -- no, you must pretend (and strive to actual believe) that you can't even see a qualitative difference at all between Christianity/Islam, Michael Bay/Ingmar Bergman, natural look/septum piercings, etc. I think that "indiscriminateness" as a virtue is the fruit of Americans' extreme fixation on egalitarianism and discomfort with any sort of hierarchy or authority.
So what is it "okay" to judge? Everything, I suppose. You cannot stop other people from judging you, at best you can just shame them into lying and saying they're not (which sounds like a worse outcome to me -- now you don't even know who looks down on you!).
If you want to get a hideous septum piercing or dye your hair some ludicrous color, please weigh whatever benefit you'd get from that action against the negativity you'll get from others (comments, mockery, rejected job applications) and then, make your decision and own that decision.
To directly answer your questions:
How much should you judge people? All the time. Unless you've been living alone on a desert island you've met a lot for people, so you have tons of data to use. It would be foolish not to use it. Your brain is designed to due exactly that sort of thing (pattern recognition).
On what should you judge them by? Any characteristics for which you have data.
Is there something you think it's wrong to judge people for? No, with some exceptions for leniency on people who have Seen Some Shit (e.g. abuse victims, war fighters/survivors, mentally ill people).
The argument is particularly strange when the book is literally choosing to draw its own cover. It makes as much sense to judge a tattoo as it does to judge something that someone has written on a piece of paper and handed to me.
writers in many cases do not get to choose covers and in some were extremely disappointed with what publisher did to their book
though I am not fan of this saying either
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Matthew 7:1-3
Another one we can lie at the feet of Christianity.
Sounds to me like an endorsement of judging, so long as you realize you will be held to the same standards.
Matthew 7:2 isn't so bad, on its own, but 7:1 literally starts with "judge not". And Matthew 7:3 suggests the judge has problems of his own he ought to be considering before judging anyone else.
The same sentiment is in John 8:7, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her". Only the perfect (i.e. God) get to judge, everyone else can suck it.
7:1 starts with "judge not" but then immediately explains why you would want to do that: "lest ye be judged". It's saying "If you judge people then God will judge you." It's the exact same idea as 7:2 (which makes sense! 7:2 is literally the next sentence of the sermon!).
It's also worth noting that in John 8 at the end even Jesus (i.e., God) declines to judge her, and then says "Go and sin no more." Which means that acknowledging adultery is a sin is not the kind of judgement he is talking about. He's talking about the punishment part of judgment.
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Everyone always leaves out verse 5:
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