In any case, I don't get the hate for comment up/downvotes: yes, some people will try to game it, but overall, it tends to get good stuff to the top, and is better than having to wade through comments randomly.
I suppose we can start by splitting up introvert and extrovert brands of interesting. Entrepeneurialness for example comes in both pondering alone time and the gathering of crowds.
If we could succeed at creating or uploading a digital dang people would be able to bench their publications in advance and create the SEO click bait hell all over until eventually (like google) success has it that the only remaining signal of quality is how high it was ranked previously back when the algo still worked. Counting click-though is specially terrible there.
Only setting real goals and tuning against exploits could produce hard numbers. It's much easier if the goal is selling a product but even then there is the short and the long game.
I don't know what the original site guidelines said, but the earliest version I could find in the wayback machine (July 2, 2014) starts exactly the same as the current content. [1]
Hacker News Guidelines
What to Submit
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting.