I think a lot of these problems come from newbies being tricked into believing the system is unbiased, when it's obvious to anyone who spends a week or two here that it's a social system. Seeing the bubbles and star system when I first joined, I was convinced that the system was unbiased, with attention based solely on the map. After all, the main tenet of EBA was, in my mind, trying out new styles of music you weren't used to. "And hey, if anime-based maps are all the rage, surely the community will like my video game maps, too?" I imagine newcomers who see the Kudosu system think the same thing: "If I get enough Kudosu, people will mod my map, no matter how unpopular of a song I choose or how unknown I am".
In retrospect, this doesn't make a whole lot of sense; people don't download the map and then decide to play it - they usually look at the artist, title, and mapper to decide these things. I was misled into making map(s) that weren't very popular subjects with the very J-Pop oriented community, and I still suffer from these setbacks.
I believe there should be some sort of helpful guide to the more subjective points of mapping; sure, it feels really unfair that J-Pop and BAT-made maps get to the top of the list, but that's the way life works. We should warn newcomers that maybe mapping Egg Fleet isn't the best idea to start with - gain some reputation before you try maps that could potentially be obscure and unpopular. It would've helped me a lot.
My main point, in difference to Echo, is that song choice plays a much larger role on map visibility instead of map quality. You need to sell your map, not just put it up there and expect a mod.