I think that's more a reflection of current society, of which people who create Wikipedia are recruited. If you want something more isolated from the whims of common folks, you still have Encyclopedia Britannica:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Donna-Strickland
Except, oops, the oldest article in EB about Strickland is from mid-2019:
https://web.archive.org/web/20190601000000*/https://www.brit...
Hey, Wikipedia included her in late 2018 -- half a year before Britannica! I mean, you may be disappointed that someone didn't pick her for inclusion in Wikipedia before her Nobel award but then I have to ask what do you think about Britannica if you consider Wikipedia to be the one in need of a overhaul? Britannica is supposed to be written by subject experts, right? Not by us poor folks in our free time. Why didn't they include her years ago?
> They could relax the standard for deletion and it wouldn't hurt anything.
Then you're one of the inclusionists. It's a perfectly valid stance that some other editors will disagree with.
They could relax the standard for deletion and it wouldn't hurt anything. If some editors think someone is prominent and others don't, leave the article in place, even if the "not prominent" side has a majority. If the article doesn't meet standards, tag it as a stub or with the "multiple issues" tag.