Example, this page has the most potential of any on Devtome
http://www.devtome.com/doku.php?id=cat_meme_page
You do not take into account that all low-hanging fruit themes are very saturated... There is a bajillion of sites with jokes and memes, and there very few reasons for visitors to come specifically to Devtome for this kind of content.
On the other hand, highbrowed content won't automatically get pageviews either.
So, some component is missing... Basically, content must be in demand.
In any case, it makes sense to formulate goals and to measure success against these goals. If it is pageviews, we need to measure them for different articles...
There is nothing missing...
What happens is...
Easy to understand, or funny brings the quick unique traffic.
Block text, Philosophy, ideaology gets leftover traffic, and long term traffic.