I hope you're looking for the criteria used by some of our colleagues... and hope you've read What is moderation? and (especially) How do I moderate? which says, inter alia, " It is good practice to front-page only nodes which are well written and well formatted, will not take up too much space on the front page, and contain information relevant to the Front Page audience — namely, visitors and newbies." ^*1

The real meat occurs a couple para further down under the head "Front-Paging a Node and in the following link, What nodes should/should not be FrontPaged? (and, in turn, Considering Front Paging a Node?).

Nuff' said? Well, here's a Readers' Digest version of my criteria: Front page, if and only if, the OP is a concise, well-formatted question which is clear and not a FAQ, and deserving (IMO) of an upvote! Be stingy with FPs when the site is busy -- generally, M-F -- and less so on holidays and weekends.

Most of what's beyond that is mere elaboration... and, FTR, I don't think I've ever FPed a thread solely on the basis of excellent answers. My theory is that visitors or newbies scanning the Front Page select what to read based on the question.

^*1 Update: Let it be noted, some of the content cited later disagrees with the quoted characterization of the folk reading the FP.