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I think you have your ratio the wrong way round.
A topic which has a high ratio of replies to views is likely to be spam. Lots of users reading it feel they can drop in a post, which suggests that it is a vague or simple topic and many of the replies will be repeated, the hallmark of bounty spammers.
Conversely, a topic which as a low ratio of replies to views suggests many users which read it don't have anything additional to contribute. The topic may be more technical or require more thought, and the replies which are there are likely to be more well thought out.
Obviously this isn't a hard and fast rule, but if we look at the reply:view ratio of a spammy board like Altcoin Discussion, we get an average from the front page at the moment of 0.12. Conversely, the ratio on a non spammy board like Development and Technical Discussion is 0.004, or about 30x lower.
I therefore wouldn't say a post with a high ratio is "popular", but conversely more likely to be spam.