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I agree, it's hard to define.
Partly it is stylistic, but in terms of the content the closest I could come to a definition is the director has a particular thesis, argument or exploration of a phenomenon.
A film with "Cops"-like footage of a drug bust could be called a documentary if they then delved deeper and interviewed the police captain and the academic and the drug user about the drug phenomenon in the area.
An entomologist who does a "Jackass"-like stunt of allowing some nasty little insect to bite them crosses the line into documentary when he then describes the biological effect of the bite on his body.
It's like writing an essay. When I write something about East Timor or James Madison, on the one hand I'm not gushing about the exploits of great and evil men like some kind of "based on real life" biopic. Nor am I saying "this happened, then this, then this - but I'm not interested in exploring the connections between these events" like a footage show.
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