I still need to push back on this a bit. The mandate of the site is: intellectually interesting things. There's nothing intellectually interesting about "making a quick buck". It's true that HN has an entrepreneurial orientation, but it's also true that many more users aren't doing startups and come here to learn.

Since I'm the lead optimizer, I know what we're optimizing HN for. The answer is intellectual curiosity. It's a hard problem, maybe even a lost cause, but people should at least know what we're trying for.