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When I'm looking at ratings for books and music, I'm very interested in the distribution. If twenty people gave something three stars, then it's solidly mediocre and it's likely not what I want. But if it has ten one-star ratings and ten five-star ratings, then that's very interesting to me. Often the low ratings are people who expected something other than what they bought, and I'll really like the product and perhaps appreciate that it's a bit avant-garde.

So I think you're right to distinguish popular from highly rated. Lots of votes indicate that people were interested to read the article and care enough about the topic to vote. Low votes will likely be more of an expression of disagreement than an indicator of your writing quality.