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Clarity: The third sentence makes the claim that he was a member of the "the first national Jewish organization." I am assuming it means the "first national Jewish organization in the United States of America." As I have found two unclear USA-centric statements in the first paragraph, it would be useful for editors to re-read the article and consider what it would look like to someone from outside of the United States. √ Done deisenbe (talk) 00:56, 12 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Clarity: The second paragraph includes the text, "to Philadelphia, where Jacob was born, two years before his birth." This could be read as "he was born two years before he was born." I would suggest as an alternative, "to Philadelphia two years before Jacob was born there." √ Done deisenbe (talk) 00:56, 12 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Prose: Why is "management" of annual balls "in aid of a Hebrew school fund" in quotation marks? If it is a factual statement supported by sources then remove the quotes. Currently the quotes on such a simple statement imply that he was doing something other than management. √ Done deisenbe (talk) 00:56, 12 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Prose: There are a lot of other short quotes throughout the article. If they are actual quotations then you will need to atribute them to their authors. If they are simple statements of fact, rephrase them in your own words and remove the quotes.
Prose: "Workum was 'a liberal donor' to the Hebrew Union College (see below)," - the use of "see below" is not advised for Wikipedia articles. Text can be moved around or deleted so easily that it can quickly become meaningless. Looking through the article I can see no follow up details on Workum and the College and if there were, I'd advise moving them to the college article. This page has to maintain focus on Jacob. √ Done deisenbe (talk) 00:56, 12 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Lead: The article has no lead section. Most of the content at the top of the page should be put under a heading like "early life" or something similar. The lead should then be written as a summary of the whole article. Take a look at other Good Article biographies (such as Pythagoras for ideas on how to structure the article.
Layout: The lead and article content need to be separated.
Words to watch: The fourth sentence begins, "He was described as" - who described him or in what situation was he described as these things?
As noted elsewhere in this review, there are a number of quotations that aren't atributed. If the quotations are kept they should be atributed and directly supported by a reliable citation.
I haven't carried out a full review of sources as many of them relate to information that should probably be removed from this article.
I have marked some claims that are unsourced but they don't relate directly to Jacob. They could be removed or rephrased with minimal impact on the biography.
I have not made a thorough check of copyright or plagiarism as many of the sources are used to support background information that is not the focus of the article. A new review of sources would be useful when the article is cleaned up.
The article is meant to be a biography about Jacob but more often strays into the lives of others or into background information on places or businesses where he was residing. Some background information is useful but it feels like the balance is too skewed here and Jacob has become lost.
It represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each:
The topic seems to treat Jacob in a positive light throughout. I have no knowledge to cast doubt on that but it is rare for any biography. Everyone makes mistakes and it is normal for some of those mistakes to be significant enough to be noted in a biography. The balance of neutrality may be easier to judge once the additional information is stripped away.
Is it stable?
It does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute:
There is no evidence of edit wars in page history and the page log shows no periods of protection.
The article contains no images. While there may be no images of the person, there should be images related to locations or activities mentioned in the article. For example, where the Washington Monument is mentioned, you could include an image from Commons:Washington Monument
Unfortunately this article has too many issues to reach Good Article status at this time. As a biographical article, it needs to focus on the topic of the individual, who often gets lost amid the scene setting. Some background to the situation is useful to the reader but when the background becomes more detailed than the person, you lose the purpose of the biography. I would suggest that you ask for some advice from Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography on how to reformat this article. From Hill To Shore (talk) 19:40, 27 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
General comments
While not a part of the assessment, I found the frequent use of citation templates in vertical format to be difficult to read in the source data. I'd advise collapsing the citations into horizontal format.
{{rp}} has been used for some citations. It is an uncommon template that appears to direct readers to muliple places within the same citation. However on this article it is used to direct readers to pages 161, 162 or 163 of the American Jewish Historical Society source. Because it is a single cluster of pages, I'd advise updating the citation to refer to this small page range and drop the rp template from that source. I haven't checked the other uses of rp in the article.
The article contains a lot of irrelevent material. While the background to Jewish life in Cincinnati is interesting, almost all of it should be removed from a biographical article about Jacob. You may want to move some of the information to an article about the city. From Hill To Shore (talk) 19:40, 27 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Jacob and his wife also owned a few slaves; Census records show that in 1850 Jacob owned a female of 55 and four males (69, 19, 12, 11), but none in 1860.
Like many slavery-counts on wiki pages, this statement reads like a moral evaluation. "Owned a few slaves" seems to imply "Not too bad on the whole", which is non-encyc. The category 'American slave owners' ought to be restricted to people whose slave-owning history was notable in itself. Valetude (talk) 05:36, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
