Hey Mike,
You dared to ask an honest question here, and this by itself shows you have some trust that there is some nice people on wikiloops willing to answer such questions. I like that, and I'll try to share my opinion with you (even tho I would not consider myself an "advanced" player myself).
I believe what is most important: wikiloops is the only band-like thing where you will not hear any complaints for not showing up for a couple of months :) We have quite a lot of members who come in irregularily, so that might be one of the reasons why they don't immediatly react to remixes you may have posted.
If you think of very well-liked musicians like MrAdamOnDrums or Dafunkydrummer (just naming two...there are so many!), you need to keep in mind, they will propably have 300 remixes to listen to when checking in once a month - and I feel its no surprise they wont listen & comment on every single one of them, which again has nothing to do with the quality of those remixes, but with the sheer amount of tracks.
The longer you are on the 'loops, the better you get to know the musicians here. In the beginning, people tend to focus on the "best rated jams" and the "latest jams" to find tracks, but after a while, most people start "following" a few musicians they really like and do not check out other peoples stuff that much. Personally, I try to check out new peoples music quite regularily, but if I get the impression someones taste in music is very different than mine, I will steer clear of their tracks. I believe the avatar pictures people choose do play a role as well - if you switch avatars too often, people will not recognize you at first sight, while certain avatars will attract attention right away (slims is a great example, it sticks out very nicely).
This switch from "I'm trying to listen to everything" to "I follow a few great people" is something that I'd consider totally normal - you wouldn't check out the latest posts on facebook or youtube either, there are just too many. Again - that has nothing to do with your mixing / playing qualities at all.
Now, since wikiloops is growing really fast and the number of dayly uploads is exploding lately, it does indeed get a bit harder to get attention to your tracks. To get a lot of listeners, thumbs and comments, one needs to build some kind of reputation, attract some followers and make themselfs known a little - hey, I get 24 thumbs on a mediocre bass, just because its me - thats not related to the quality of my playing either and basicly the opposite problem to yours :)
So, here's a few hints what I believe new members would benefit from:
- get a easy to spot avatar and keep it for a longer while
- post remixes one at a time. If I notice someone I am following is dropping 20 quickly done tracks in 30minutes (and I get notified about all of them), then thats annoying and I get the feeling he or she didn't really take much time to do well. Also, if you post several mixes in a row, only the very last one will get featured on the startpage, so all previous ones will propably not get many listeners.
- start by posting remixes, not templates. The more you collaborate on other peoples tracks, the better the chances to get known a little. Just dropping new templates will not do that, and dropping templates or remixes which end the collaboration because they are complete works is not a good thing to attract people looking to collaborate.
- Give comments that exceed the "one-word-class". Comments like "Great!", "Killer!", "Nice!" etc are cool, but if you check your newsfeed and find out user X left the comment "Nice!" on ten of your tracks within three minutes, it starts to feel a little odd.
Stick out by actually giving feedback to other peoples tracks, tell them what their track made you think about, reminded you of, what could be improved, whats especially good etc etc. People will check your stuff out if you seem to care for theirs and give interesting feedback.
- choose creative titles for your tracks. "first attempt" and "added bass" are not likely to attract anyones attention! Use the tags & description opportunities to show people what it is you intended to present - a commentless track with a poor title and no tags looks less great, and giving some info shows you actually meant something when posting a track. (see tipps & tricks forum for an article on this issue)
- get active in the forum and introduce yourself here, it shows another level of being interested in the community than just posting tracks.
- take on the approach Slim explained in his reply. It basicly is as Forest Gumps Mom said: "wikiloops is like a box of chocolate - you never know what you will get!" - you may get the greatest remix three years down the road, when one of your followers discovers the track you posted yesterday. Maybe. Dont get frustrated is nothing happens at first, rather contribute to either offer cool templates to others or to document your own progress and fun (both is cool), but dont judge your wikiloops experience by thumbs or number of comments. After all, the average amount of comments per track is still way higher on wikilops than on any other network I know - dont expect the wikiloops members to be waiting for your track, tho, everyone is busy having fun, and there are quite a lot of tracks out there wanting attention :)
To answer you question directly: A musically "poor" remix of a track you have been working on really hard is not a nice experience.
It does not happen often, but sometimes it does.
If someone takes out a badly mixed guitar and flushes all my efforts with a poor five minute guitar solo, then thats a sign he might have had too much fun to realize what he or she was doing.
To me as the template producer, its a poor experience. I believe nobody really minds this happening every now and then, but the remixer will certainly be remembered as rather careless... so fewer listeners next time.
A description saying "I had so much fun, I couldn't stop soloing! Dicks bass just made me take it out all the way :) sorry if I left no room, had to do it!" can change this impression A LOT, as you may imagine.
Bottom line: dont start feeling bad or questioning your skill because f the way people react (or dont react) to your track. Ask for feedback what can be improved if you feel you need some!