I often submit original scientific articles and reports here that achieve no traction. When I then submit less technical versions appearing in more mainstream media — New York Times, Wired, Verge, The New Yorker, etc. — they frequently appear on the home page, generating hundreds of comments. I'm always in a quandary as to which approach to take: after all, if a tree falls in a forest....
Yes, that's a common pattern. Experience has taught us that it's best to submit the highest-quality popular article on a topic and link to the original paper in the thread. If an article is too specialist-oriented it probably won't do well here regardless of how interesting it is. Papers on computing are an exception, because a significant subset of the audience here is able to read those.
