ok i think i've found my maps, so closed.
if you were curious "effort" took into consideration:
- willingness to receive feedback
- involvement in the spread of the mapset. in other words, your difficulties could be played by a wide audience (doesn't apply for marathons)
- evidence of "self-modding". basically obvious stuff u could fix/polish yourself
- cool descriptions, storyboards, colorhaxing and things of that nature
- quality hitsounding that complements the song well
- attention to detail. spacing, bad overlaps etc.
hopefully this encourages you to employ some of these techniques if you don't already