The “notability” criterion on Wikipedia is remarkably slippery.
In theory, it is objective. There should be no real question about it. It is a synonym for something like “evidenceable,” “researchable,” or “verifiable.” Something is ‘notable’ according not to subjective perception but rather whether you can find third party sources to corroborate basic details. Notability is about the problem of, “You said this podcaster’s real name was X Quasimodo Mogadishu, the X is not short for anything, his literal first name is the letter X... That looks a lot like vandalism to me, is there a third party source that I can consult to confirm if this was vandalism or reality?” If such details are unverifiable, we filethe subject of the article as “not notable” and delete the page until that changes.
In practice, the word is so pliable that it is bent into whatever shape the moderators desire. I have heard “well, this guy is notable in the such-and-so community, just not on the world stage.” my response, “What?! What on earth does that have to do with me finding third party sources to confirm what facts I am seeing in this article? Like, are you saying that the third party sources are encoded in hopeless amounts of jargon such that it is no longer English?” met silence, because of course that's not the point, the point is that the admins can reinvent the definition of notability as they see fit.
Don't feel bad that you got burned. The basic problem is that Wikipedia is a democracy, and democratic governance requires politics, and you came into the situation as a political outsider. Of course it didn't go your way, it only goes your way if you are lucky.