The way you want Wikipedia to work is exactly the problem Wikipedia does have: people write vanity/promo articles about themselves, and then get their friends to barge in and claim "subject matter expertise" to rebut the people doing Lexis/Nexis and University library periodical searches to verify that people are non-notable.
This happened all the time in my domain of expertise (information security), and it was exasperating trying to beat it back. Some jackass would write an article about himself and then tie up AfD for weeks claiming that the trade press quotes he got constituted reliable source coverage of his notability, while his friends and coworkers would jump on saying "I've worked in this field for 7 years and I can tell you that everyone in information security knows this guy is one of the most important" zzzzzzz Strong deletespeedy deletedelete with fire.
Whatever trouble you feel like you had with Wikipedia's interface: your friend got a very fair shake in the AfD debate. She wrote a non-notable book, and was quoted in passing in a couple articles, and that's basically it. People took real time out of their day to verify the pretty-obvious fact that your friend doesn't need to be in the encyclopedia. Stop being angry about that.
One of the things novices eternally miss about Wikipedia is that is might be their first time posting/supporting an article, but it is the eleven billionth time Wikipedia has has to deal with somebody like them.
When I got spam in in 1995? I would call spammers on the phone and politely talk them out of spamming. Now? I would happily nuke them from orbit. Most HN readers would.
One of the things on Wikipedia that wore me out is people approaching things like Jessie Stricchiola and Danny Sullivan did. I am sure they are decent people generally, and from their perspective I'm sure their self-promotion and drama spewing seems entirely reasonable. But man, when you're just a volunteer trying to help make something cool, stuff like this makes it get real old, real fast.
This happened all the time in my domain of expertise (information security), and it was exasperating trying to beat it back. Some jackass would write an article about himself and then tie up AfD for weeks claiming that the trade press quotes he got constituted reliable source coverage of his notability, while his friends and coworkers would jump on saying "I've worked in this field for 7 years and I can tell you that everyone in information security knows this guy is one of the most important" zzzzzzz Strong delete speedy delete delete with fire.
Whatever trouble you feel like you had with Wikipedia's interface: your friend got a very fair shake in the AfD debate. She wrote a non-notable book, and was quoted in passing in a couple articles, and that's basically it. People took real time out of their day to verify the pretty-obvious fact that your friend doesn't need to be in the encyclopedia. Stop being angry about that.