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Should I treat specialized wikis with the same scrutiny as Wikipedia itself?
Suppose I am making a paper on the impact of popular TV shows on the spread of correct knowledge and facts about current and past events. Shows like South Park, The Simpsons and likely others often feature recent events in their storylines, as well as past events as well. These shows often have specialized wikias, usually in the form of "showname.wikia.com".
These wikias are mainly maintained by a dedicated subgroup of the fanbase for that show, people who usually know a lot about it. This means that the information on there comes from more reliable sources. In addition, since most of the information stems from individual episodes, there usually isn't any information about that episode outside of the wikia or the episode itself.
In cases like this, would it be appropriate to use the wikia as a source?

I would still avoid the usage of wikia and look at the references provided by the wiki and possibly reference them instead.

Even if the reference is a specific episode of the show?

If you provide the link the to wiki that would be great, and possibly tell me what you are trying to reference in the article itself.

It's a hypothetical question, I'm not working on a paper about this subject.

Take a look at EnergyNumbers answer. That was the message I was trying to convey in a well written manner.

I disagree with the answers that say "There's no difference."
In both cases, you should critically evaluate the content with respect to correctness, reliability, etc. However, there is a difference with respect to the nature of the content.
Wikipedia (for most topics) serves as a tertiary source. That is, it aggregates primary and secondary sources on a topic, but doesn't add original content or interpretation. (In fact, it is against Wikipedia policy to include original content or interpretation.) In these cases, you should find and use the original source, to verify its contents and to give credit to the real authors.
Dedicated wikis on pop culture often do contain original content. And quite a few Wikipedia pages on pop culture do as well, even though they aren't supposed to (see e.g., Mythology of Lost).
For example, the Lost wiki contains a great deal of interpretation and commentary (e.g.: an analysis of recurring themes in the series) - not just a rehash of the episode plots. This makes it a secondary source, not a tertiary source.
You can use this original content (having critically assessed its correctness and reliability), and of course if you do, you should cite it.
For example, suppose you are writing a paper on "Use of the flash-forward technique in early 21st century television" and you read the following on the Lost wiki (or on an equivalent page on Wikipedia):

In Lost, the flash-forward technique was introduced in "Through the Looking Glass", although it wasn't made clear that it was a flash-forward until the end of the episode. The first episode to feature a flash-forward that was clearly shown to be one from the start was "The Beginning of the End". "Ji Yeon" was the first episode to intertwine flashbacks with flash-forwards, although the flashback element was only clearly revealed to be in the past at the end of the episode, making its temporality a plot twist.

Even if you then go on and watch the episodes "Through the Looking Glass," "The Beginning of the End," and "Ji Yeon" yourself, or read the episode scripts (i.e., verify the correctness of the claim by checking the primary source), you still cannot claim in your work that you identified the use of flash-forward in Lost all by yourself! The wiki page in this case is a secondary source with an original analysis and interpretation, and you should cite it as such.

I don't think wikia are any different to wikipedia: there is no expert quality-control editorial staff like a proper encyclopaedia has: there are only the site owner(s), and the collective wisdom and collective foolishness of the contributors.
If you are writing about, and analysing, the wikia itself, then cite the wikia.
If, however, you are writing about the thing that the wikia itself writes about, then where possible use the wikia as a lead to find sources, but not as a source in itself. For things such as a preçis of a particular episode, then the production company or original broadcaster may have an episode guide. At very worst, you may have to cite the wikia itself: in which case, be sure to cite a specific version of a page, but IMDB may be a better source.

re "as a lead to find sources"; Not a good strategy, as unlike Wikipedia, for wikia pages you generally need to be lucky to find a single source, let alone more.

How do you think Wikipedia is less reliable than a smaller, not widely known topic wiki?

We all know that Wikipedia is only about 99% reliable. [1]

and

We all know nothing about the reliability of the topic wiki.

That does not sound like a good base to conclude the topic wiki is more reliable than Wikipedia, - it's reliability is just much more unknown.
The effect is that every second person on the street can explain to you how Wikipedia "is not reliable", "contains errors" -
while you or your Professor have a hard time ensuring that the topic wiki is even somewhat reliable at all!
For example, it's hard to tell whether a "dedicated subgroup of the [actual user base]" is influenced by some important person or subgroup following some non-neutral motivation. What's missing compared to Wikipedia is transparency... or at least we are not sure it's not missing.
Wikipedia has lots of transparency on even the tiniest discussion.

[1]  The 99% is just an example value for illustration, and wrong for sure. (But which way?)

I did not say that the topic wiki is more reliable. I said that on average, the person who edits and maintains a topic wiki has more interest in the topic than the average person who edits and maintains the page on the topic on Wikipedia. That usually means that the person has a bigger and usually more accurate knowledge on the topic. There are also far more details on the topic wikis. for example, the Simpsons Wiki has a page on every major and minor character from the series. Wikipedia has a few summary pages on the recurring characters, and a few individual on the main cast.

Ok, that's true, he has more interest, resulting in more details, almost "by definition" of the term topic wiki. But I am thinking about factual correctness - and more interest and more details means a single person can "skew the data" or "push his point" more easily.


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References needed when pointing to already outlined aspects?
how do you have to handle referencing/ citations in the following scenario:
In the first paragraph of a section, a concept A is introduced with a citation. In the following paragraph, another concept B is introduced.
Then in the third paragraph, both concepts are mentioned again (for example, to combine both to a concept C). Do you have to add a reference after both concepts again?
(1) "Combining concept A (Author S, date, p. XXX) and concept B (Author P, date, p. XX), a concept C supports the argument ..."
(2) "Combining concept A and concept B, ..."
Which approach is correct? If none, how shall this be done?

The purpose of a citation is to acknowledge the contributions of others and to refer the reader to a source for further elucidation. Your possibility (2) does this as well as (1) and should be sufficient. You can italicize concepts A and B as a short-cut that you will be reusing them. If you are free to choose a less burdensome citation style (such as numeric references [3] or abbreviated references [TS22]), then possibility (1) becomes more attractive. As it is, it really lowers readability.

thank you. So if concept A and B have already been introduced a paragraph earlier in the same section, (2) does not require the same in-text reference (--> it is optional)?

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Should I inform a person that I am going to acknowledge him in a paper?
I am collaborating in a multi-authored paper in physics. In one part, I made a mathematical contribution and proved some important theorem.
However, I was not sure whether my proof is quite correct. Therefore, I posted a question on MathOverflow and a partial answer showed up which was very close to my proof and I would say that it was parallel (which is clear if someone reads the comments). Nevertheless, the answerer made some remark, which is well known in literature, but I wasn't aware of it and it helped me to improve my proof.
In my opinion an acknowledgement would suffice and I really would like to acknowledge him, but at the same time I don't want to cite this question in the paper, because of two reasons: 1) I'm pretty sure that it would make problems regarding who made the contributions (among my coauthors and the answerer), 2) The post is somewhat pedagogically since I was new in that field.
Now, my question is: can I acknowledge the answerer without letting him know? Or should I let him know beforehand? In the latter case he would say that I have to cite that post, which I don't want to. What is the best action here?

Was this a public post where they gave their real name?  It's a matter of record, this is what they said?  If they put it out there in the public sphere, that's usually fair game to cite or remark on any way you like, even without permission.  For example, a lot of Wikipedia articles cite Usenet posts with names of the authors and they definitely didn't ask permission.

Being acknowledged in a paper does not imply that the person being acknowledged is endorsing the content of the paper, or is making any other sort of statement.* Thus, there is no need or ethical obligation to ask the person’s permission; you are free to go ahead. You can inform the person that you acknowledged them if you wish, and it would be a courtesy, but even that is not a requirement. I have been acknowledged on a number of occasions and in most cases I don’t think the people doing so bothered to let me know especially, nor have I made special efforts to contact all the people I’ve acknowledged in all my papers.
As for citing or not citing the mathoverflow question, I don’t have a strong opinion about whether you should cite it, but your reasons for not wanting to cite it seem not very good. In general, wanting to hide information from the readers because you think it makes you look bad (whether fairly or unfairly) is a bad motivation for hiding that information. And hiding information from your coauthors, for any reason, is even worse and may really start implying some not very good things about your motives. Your decision whether to include a citation should depend solely on whether that information is sufficiently relevant to what you are discussing and/or important to give credit to someone. It may be that there is no compelling reason here to cite the question, but at least you should make that decision based on legitimate criteria and not fears, rational or irrational, that this will “make problems” for you.
* That is true as long as the acknowledgement isn’t phrased in a dishonest way to misleadingly imply something that isn’t true. See the discussion in the comments for examples.

I think there's some dependence on the nature of the acknowledgment. Thanking someone for helpful discussions or for pointing to a relevant reference does not imply endorsement, but thanking someone for providing or checking some result(s) used in the paper would seem to imply an endorsement at least in part.

Thanks for the answer! I am not afraid of what I have written in my post, because from that post it is clear that I already worked on the problem and had partial results, and I also corrected the answerer and gave several inputs. However, the posts are usually edited several times and usually no one will make effort to see who did what! Because I had bad experiences in some collaborations I just want to avoid misunderstandings und nonsensical conflicts. I think I will acknowledge him and send an email after I put the paper on arXiv.

@Anyon there’s no dependence, you just aren’t allowed to state things that aren’t factually true. If I write “Thanks to the Dalai Lama for our many nights together drinking red wine and reading poetry”, His Holiness will have some good reasons to be upset with me. If I write “Thanks to the Dalai Lama for inspiring this work on automorphic L-functions”, then that’s fine and I don’t need his permission, if the sentiment is genuine. Similarly, if someone actually checked the proofs in my paper, I don’t need their permission to thank them for that, since I’m not implying anything that isn’t true.

@Astrolabe I’m sorry you had conflicts with coauthors in the past. It still seems to me you are overthinking this. Again, wanting to “avoid misunderstandings and nonsensical conflicts” is a bad reason to decide to cite or not to cite a reference. It may be a good reason to take other actions, such as working on having good communication with your coauthors, or even deciding not to collaborate with certain people, but I don’t think it should influence your citation decision.

I see your point! I have formulated my thoughts not clearly. I think I have enough reasons not to cite that post independently of what I said earlier. Thanks for the help!

Generally speaking, if you include the real name of a living person in a paper other than in a citation then you should get their permission. They might want to refuse, depending on the paper you are writing.
There are exceptions to the above for "public figures" such as presidents and movie personalities, but those things don't apply here.
If you want to acknowledge a person anonymously then you don't need permission. But including the name of the person "connects" them to the paper in a way that they might not want to happen.
Note that I doubt that this is a universal opinion. But it is courteous, if nothing more to get permission.

Thanks! But what happens if he demands that he should be a coauthor, which I don't think should be?

Just say no. From the rest of your description it doesn't seem warranted. In particular, they made no commitment to the direction of the paper as a whole.

That is true. Still, I'm worried about the post since I don't want to cite it and if I contact him he most likely would tell me to cite it, which again I don't want to.

Actually, they can only "ask" you to cite it, not "tell" you. You only need permission to use their name.

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After graduation, my work was followed up and being published, and I'm named as nth (n>3) author, is it a proper arrangement?
When I did my Master thesis, I discovered a new physical phenomenon and realized a novel technique in our prototype device. However, due to the rush of graduation, I didn't have time to collect enough data for the formal publication.
After I graduate from the master's degree, the work was handed over to the Ph.D. in the group with other master's students to finish up. Using exactly the same technology I developed, they formally collected data from the standard device in use and going to publish the paper on that technology. However, I will be listed as the nth (n>3) author in the publication (the front are several PhD and Master students who is participating in the follow-up).
So the problem is, on one hand, they collected data for the publication and wrote the manuscript, so I understand the issue about first author. On the other hand, I almost individually developed the technology that is being published, but only named as a nth author. Is it a proper author arrangement?

Did you actively participate in the publication preparation? "they formally collected data from the standard device in use " you do not know how many practical issues they may have had in the -formal collection of data-.

You need to give the field, really. Ordering conventions are both complex and very localized to subject. I co-wrote a paper in physical chemistry. A friend and I worked out a model for something, and his student did experiments to obtain a parameter using that model. The experimenter came first, then me, then two people I don't know who were included for some reason, and then my friend last. I just let him order the names correctly.

"I discovered a new physical phenomenon and realized a novel technique in our prototype device". It seems the method is a novel technique, allowed by the capabilities of the prototype device. To me, external observer, it looks like the prototype device had some interesting features, OP took the features for granted and started to build on top of them a novel technique.
OP can you comment on this?

The field is experimental physics, and the prospective publication is exactly on that technique, but not a specific device.

The text of the paper should acknowledge you as the discoverer of the technique, rather than the order of names. Even if your name didn't appear, you should be explicitly credited.

I have never seen a physics paper that specifically said in the text that "Person X developed this technique." If the OP wasn't listed as an author at all (for example if the OP's work wasn't actually substantial), then such a phrase could be put in the acknowledgments.

A minor additional note; it is more important to your career that the people you did work with in your masters like you and write good letters of recommendation than that you were n=8 vs n=4 author on a paper.

I hope you describe your discovery in your master thesis. And you gave it enough space and emphasis of the novelty and impact of your discovery. It could even be an appendix, if it would not fit into the overall story line of your thesis.
Then you could ask the authors of the paper, to cite your paper. Then it is obvious you did the discovery and the paper is meant to spread the word to the wider community and provide data to "prove" the discovery.
You are the sole author of your master thesis. Everybody would know, that you received according help from your professor or advisor. The right ordering of the authors in the paper is less important compared to this, as the master thesis predates the paper.
Probably it is too late for this, but others might profit from my answer.

I have had this conversation multiple times with my supervisors. It really depends on a few things and the order is usually agreed upon by the authors. You can put the order of the authors:

Alphabetically
By Seniority
By Reverse Seniority
Who contributed the most

However, usually the first author is the one who contributed the most AND is the corresponding author. I think the best practice is by order of contribution.
My supervisor once told me that two authors decided the order by playing a game of croquet.
If it really bugs you, ask the lead author why you were placed where you were.

Note that in some fields, certainly in biology and related ones, the convention is that the person who carried out the research is first and the one who supervised/directed it is last. Both first and last positions are, therefore, prestigious and the closer you are to either, the greater your contribution. So usually, the first author will be the student who did the work and the last author is the PI and corresponding author.

@terdon same deal in physics (with some exceptions like the huge LHC collaborations which are mostly alphabetical)

Same in physics and engineering, you ideally want to be first author or last author.  First author means you contributed the most in terms of workload, last author means you were the director for the project essentially.

First of all, there's no such thing as a proper author arrangement. There are no laws or regulations about this, and there's even no universally accepted meaning of the author positions, so the authors are arranged as agreed between themselves, and that agreement or understanding is usually reached early on, in the very initial stages of the research to be published. That is, when researchers want to do some research together, they negotiate who does what and who gets which position on the author list. If you are not happy with the proposed position, you are free not to participate in the project at all. In short, the position on the author list is a result of a negotiation, and your leverage in that negotiation is your ability to contribute to the project.
It looks like you did your work without having negotiated your position on the author list. This is pretty usual for MS students, and they don't have good negotiating skills and leverage anyway. You are thus entitled only to be listed as one of the authors, not to be in any specific position on the author list. You get what you negotiate, not what your work is worth. The earlier you learn this the faster you will adapt to this harsh and unfair world.
A few other remarks:
(1) Be happy you are listed at all. The thing is that if you develop some technique and then this technique is used to do some study, you are not necessarily entitled to be listed as a co-author of that study. It's a grey area of ethics and there are no rules about this. Albert Einstein developed the relativity theory, but he isn't listed as a co-author of each and every paper in which that theory is used.
(2) Your co-authors may value your contribution differently and consider your position to be fair. The thing is that MS students are usually heavily reliant on advice, ideas, and mentoring by their supervisors and often do only relatively low-skilled work.
(3) It looks like you were not shown the manuscript before its submission to the journal. If so, it's a research misconduct. When you submit a manuscript to a journal, you have to check the box or declare in some other way that all authors were shown the final version and agreed with its submission to the journal. However, even if you had been shown the manuscript, you could not have done anything about your position on the author list. Your only leverage would have been the ability to say no to submission of the manuscript with your name on it, in which case they could have simply removed you from the author list, see Remark (1) above.
(4) As long as you are not the first author, it doesn't really matter much which position you are in. The thing is that when you apply for academic positions, what people count in your CV is the number of first-authored papers and the number of co-authored papers. I have seen people negotiating the first position, but have never seen people negotiating other positions. People don't bother fighting over such minor things—so neither should you.

It need to be clarify that, the proposed publication is exactly discussing the technique itself, but not a study which uses that technique. But this is a very rational answer, I like it!

@David +1 Be happy you are listed at all

"It looks like you did your work without having negotiated your position on the author list. " the need to do this is an indication of a toxic collaboration where you are likely to be exploited.  Generally the contributions to a research project (where you don't know the outcome a-priori) are only known at the end, not the start.  I know from experience that this is common in some fields, but the publication culture in some fields is toxic.  I suspect the prospect (or absence of) patents is a useful indicator.

"The earlier you learn this the faster you will adapt to this harsh and unfair world." and ensure that it continues to be a hard and unfair world, but now it is your fault as well.  Treat other people the way you would want to be treated in their position.  In my experience people lose more by exploiting other than they would gain from proper collaboration.  IMHO

otherwise completely agree though! (+1)

It depends.
If the publication is about results using your method, then certainly you cannot expect to be first author, especially if you did not participate in the collection and/or analysis of the data.
If the publication introduces your new method and includes practical use in data collection, then you should probably be higher up in the author list.
You cannot expect to be part of papers by others who simply use your technique.

Congratulation for your publication! It is always nice to be part of a productive group and being able to contribute toward the progress of science&technology.
Regarding your reward for giving a fundamental contribution: it looks like you would be a succesful researcher, if already at the Master level you were able to develop such a technological feature.
Since it was not a stroke of luck, it seems you are fit for R&D activities.
Why do you care so much about the order of authorship? Since you are speaking about a technology you developed, I would be much more concerned about patenting it: did you (ever) speak with your former advisor? It may be that you gave up intellectual property on whatever was published in the Master thesis, so if you published your core diea and the demostration, you basically give it out for free to the University and to the Department.
Anyhow, please ignore the fact that you were listed as n-th co-author: being co-author is already an important step, even more if you did not contribute to the publication (equally smart people with equal access to publications will develop the same idea ... but the difference is the one concretizing the idea, even if it is through menial formal data collection).
Since you are so sure your contribution was so relevant, when you will be interviewed you can present yourself as self-confident (but please do not overstate your capabilities).  Good luck!

Consider it your mistake not to have realised the magnitude of your accomplishment, and to have secured complete ownership of your intellectual property in the public domain. Claiming sole authorship of publication was quite approriate in this case where you can acknowledge your sponsor and supervisor's name in passing (if you so choose).
In this case though, an explicit (indexed) reference to your dissertation needs to be cited within the preamble of the publication's text so that the reader is in no doubt as to the paper's origin and basis. It is not necessary to add you as one of the authors since you aren't an author of this particular (derived) work. If you want deeper credit for your contribution, submit a publication under your own name.


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What is the best way to keep your students from getting out of control?
I am new to teaching. Recently I was given the opportunity to teach at my own university (I am currently doing an MPhil from my university).
If a teacher fails to control his students once, he wouldn't be able to control them until the end of semester.
This is my first time in teaching and I am afraid that my students would get out of my control. They wouldn't listen to me, would misbehave and wouldn't let me give my lecture without interruption.
Please advise me the best way to keep my cool and prevent my students from getting out of control.
EDIT: I have not started teaching yet. I'll be starting my classes from next week.
EDIT2: The students are Bachelors students. I don't actually want to control them. I just want to maintain discipline in my class. I want to prevent misbehavior in my class. I have seen students not listening to new teachers and just pass the whole lecture passing comments.

Are you teaching young children? Seriously, though, coming in with that frame of mind (need to control students) will probably not suit you well.

@thomas I just want to maintain discipline in my class.I don't want things to get out of my hands(as I have seen happen several times when I was studying)The students are in their Bachelors degree.

@Thomas: I guess the downside of widening access to higher education, is that it's not longer the case the only people in class are the ones interested in learning something. There are also people who attend university because it's the thing you do, and then are herded into class more-or-less against their will, just like young children at school. In a previous age they'd simply waste their parents' money and skip class ;-p But it's still true that you at least don't need to approach it as a crowd-control job.

It's been a few years, what did you figure out that worked for you?

First, realize that the main reason they might misbehave is the same as every one else, whether they are 4, 14, 24 or 94 years old: they will be distracted if they are not interested, bored. Conjectural factors surely also play a role (if it's nap time, for example), but if you get them interested you increase dramatically your chances of having a well-behaved audience.
Now, with regards to exercising your authority on a crow, the principles are again pretty much the same for 4 years old and 20 years old:

Immediately assume a position of authority. You have to be convinced that you naturally assume this authority before you go to the class. It derives from two factors:
    a. By naming you a lecturer, your university gave you authority over the lecture room. Be ready, but not overly eager, to exercise it.
    b. This authority also derives from your skills and knowledge: you are an authority on the topic you are lecturing. To maintain this, you have to be prepared to teach your topic.
Be consistent. Lay out a set of rules, explain them, and enforce them. They have to appear justified and reasonable to the students, so that you can enforce them if need be. Always put things back in perspective: why are we here, and how this justifies what I do.
To give an example: I always start by explaining that “I will not shout, because my voice doesn't allow me to go through the whole lecture shouting. Thus, if the noise level meets the point where I would need to shout, I will simply stop lecturing.” Standing there, silent, is a very effective way to lead the group to self-discipline (“hey, guys, shush!”). If necessary, I will remind them that even if I cover less material, the exam still covers the whole planned curriculum…
Be pragmatic. If things are going bad for some external circumstances, be prepared to make a justified exception to the rules, for the benefit of everyone. For example, if it's Friday afternoon and all students are exhausted from a week of exams, giving them 10 minutes off in the middle of a two-hour lecture might lead to overall improved productivity.

But most importantly, realize that while first impression is important, it is not “do or die”. Even as an experienced teacher, sometime you will underperform a given day (because you're tired, because you're not committed enough to this specific topic, because …), but there is nothing you cannot correct later.

Just to point out one thing the other answerers (especially F'x, Damien and Nicholas) haven't mentioned, do encourage and reward any contructive interruptions, like asking questions about the subject you're covering or, even better, answering questions asked by other students, pointing out any mistakes you may have made or letting you know if the material you're presenting has already been covered in another class.
One of the best things that could possibly happen, as far as engaging your students to learn is concerned, is having a spontaneous on-topic discussion between students emerge in your class.  If there's any chance of that happening, you definitely should encourage it, even if it's cutting into time you'd planned to spend talking about something else.  You can always make up for the lost time later.
Of course, the size of the class matters here.  In a class of 10 people, you can just let the discussion unfold naturally; in a class of 200, you're going to have to hand out turns for speaking and make sure you don't let a discussion between a small group of students drag out so long that others get bored.  Just try to do it without sounding dismissive.
How is all this relevant to maintaining discipline in class?  Well, the thing is that the #1 cause of classroom misbehavior is boredom.  (The #2 cause is probably the mistaken belief that you have to misbehave in class to be "cool".)
On one hand, the more your students get to engage in the teaching process and to guide it towards things they're interested in, the less bored they will be.  On the other, if your students are getting bored, you'll want to know about it and find out why it's happening: Are you going too slow or too fast?  Do they find the material you're presenting irrelevant?  Or are they just too tired and unable to concentrate?  The best (if not the only) way to know that is to encourage your students to provide you with honest feedback whenever they have trouble following your lecture or find it uninteresting.
Another trick that may help is to tell your students up front that attending classes is voluntary, as long as they understand that anything they miss will still be on the exam.  If they don't want to stay in the classroom, it's better that they leave than get bored and distract others.  That way, you'll get rid of the students who are bored because they already know the subject, as well as, hopefully, some of those who just feel like they have to misbehave.  (The latter group may flunk the exam, but that will at least hopefully teach them a lesson for the next time.)
(If you do this, it's a good idea to post a detailed lesson plan in advance, and maybe make your lecture notes / slides available, so that students who choose not to attend can check if they'll miss, or have missed, anything they didn't know already.)
You should also encourage your students to come ask you after class if they feel like they're not keeping up or if there's something they just don't get.  Not only does that give you a chance to help them over their stumbling block and to keep up with the class, but it also provides you with useful feedback on your teaching.  If you find a lot of students getting stuck on a specific critical issue, you may even want to announce a change in your lesson plan and use the next lecture to focus on that point until you're pretty sure everybody gets it.  Just make sure to keep asking for feedback as you do it.

@TobiasKienzler There are a number of studies which show a direct correlation between class attendance and completing a degree. Those who do not come to class are much more likely to not finish.

@earthling So what? That's their own risk. But by being forced to be present at (and probably disturbing) lectures at the expense of other students certainly doesn't help. And then there're those who prefer to learn from books, or who have already heard another lecture with 90% overlap. University students are supposed to be capable of judging their capabilities, they don't need Kindergarden rules anymore. If they fail due to being absent, maybe they picked the wrong course to start with

@TobiasKienzler Actually, I have very mixed feelings on the subject. I do feel as you do. Students should be independent learners, etc. but then again, it is the strong students who become teachers so we should not just think of ourselves but also of the weaker students. We should also consider other perspectives. From the perspective of the school, students dropping is not good and if we can prevent students from dropping, we should do what we can. Again, I have very mixed feelings on it. Still, the research is there.

I'm with @TobiasKienzler on this one; college students are adults.  If students don't find lectures useful for mastering course material, it's better for everyone if they stay home.  Also, don't confuse correlation with causality; skipping lectures is strongly correlated with failure, but forcing attendance doesn't address the real problem.

@JeffE Good point, I wish the difference between correlation and causality were taught better at school - but apparently learning poetry analysis is considered more important than that, so now people know what a Haiku is but not why they should vaccinate against measles ("someone got sick afterwards, so vaccinations must be evil")... Anyway, I wonder if voluntary vs obligatory presence would make a good question here

@earthling My wife once heard a lecture in statistics starting with "So, what connection shall we prove today? Maybe that watching TV causes your salary to increase?"... While it may look great for a school to have many students drop out, it will look even worse if they appear to let everyone pass no matter how inapt they are - that would imply the school's certificate are unreliable. There is a point at which you have to let go. Though I agree that students shouldn't be dropped prematurely and it's better to give them one chance more than they might actually deserve

@TobiasKienzler Were I an administrator, I might be able to do something about this. However, I am not. Still, I am concerned about the weakest students. The fact that they are undermotivated does not stop me from wanting to motivate them...and it is much harder to motivate them if they do not come to class. It would be easier to simply give up (and let them fail out) but then I would only teach the strongest students...and they don't need my help to learn - they learn just fine on their own (though that would be much more fun for me).

@earthling: In my experience, it's precisely the weaker students who will attend class most regularly, at least as long as they can keep up, since they'll know they can't afford to skip it. What you need to do is set the pace so that even your weaker students can keep up (and ideally offer remedial instruction to the weakest ones). In any case, no amount of sitting in class is likely to help those weaker students who get "stuck" on some intermediate concept and fail to keep pace, since without the missing concepts they probably won't be able to properly understand the later lessons anyway.

@IlmariKaronen Clearly we have different students. For me, the weaker ones are the ones more likely to not come to class. The stronger ones are all quite motivated to come and learn what they can.

@earthling +1 for wanting to motivate - but there's the dilemma: Some students are too weak (in this area, they might simply have chosen the wrong course) and you're doing no one a favour by trying to support even them as hard as possible because then you'll have to neglect those in the middle field who aren't great but with some support could become as good or better than the "gifted" ones. Everyone deserves an equal opportunity to start with, but it's better to let everyone understand how hard the course can be so they can try and estimate whether they'll manage it or not instead of

having to learn this bitter lesson after multiple semesters, effectively having wasted much time for something they then either fail, quit or barely manage but due to a low grade won't succeed with in applications later on. I (partly) agree with @IlmariKaronen here: Weaker students should be able to keep up - but not at the expense of the stronger ones. Ideally there'd be some common base lectures for everyone but the respective workshops might be split into groups where the lecture material is explained more thoroughly (for the "weak" ones) and groups where the bigger picture is taught

When I first began to teach, nothing I said would make the students behave.  It was only when I acted did students start to behave.  For your first semester of teaching, I recommend that you strictly follow all the rules your university has on disciplining students.  This includes sending them to the office of student affairs, filing disciplinary cases, giving failing grades for an activity or for the whole course, and so on.  It is important that your response be quick and consistent.  Again, you do not have to say anything, you don't even have to warn them or remind them of the rules.  Just implement the disciplinary measures quickly and consistently.  Act as if it's no big deal to you, as if you've been doing it your entire life so many times that it has become second nature to you.
If you do this, trust me, you will have absolutely no problems with discipline during the next semester.

For university students, you could point out the obvious - that they are no longer at school, and things are done a little differently here. Classroom discipline is essentially an implicit pre-requisite, which should have been learned at school.
Primarily, they will be expected to behave as adults. This means showing both their lecturers and their fellow students the respect they deserve and pay silent attention to the lecturer.
In conjunction with expressing this view, I have seen the application of the policy that, if there is prolonged disruptive behaviour from any student or group of students, following N warnings, the lecturer will simply walk out of the class, return to his/her office and wait for a/the class representative to apologise on behalf of the class.
Getting the approval of your line manager of this policy is recommended before you follow it. Telling the students up front that this is how you will deal professionally with class disruption will give you the confidence to actually execute the policy, if needed. You will know that you have a plan in place, the students know that plan, you know you can follow through with your plan as required.
Peer pressure is your ally, here.

Be very clear that even if you walk out of a disruptive class, students are still responsible for the material that you would have covered.

@JeffE Excellent point and one that I always mention on those very few days I have had to walk out on a class.

There are so many great answers here already but I do feel there is one important point which is not covered which needs to be. Before I get to my point, I will just say that being a good teacher requires you to get it all right, not just get most of it right. If you let one thing slip (like classroom management) your teaching can end up being extremely ineffective which will be reflected in the final grades of your students.
The point I want to add to all of the others already mentioned by others is to engage the students. I don't mean just making it interesting (that is also extremely important) but you should actually make the students do as much of the work as you can (read up on Active Learning). The more you can get the students actively working on the subject of the class, the less chance there will be, even for those who are quite advanced, to become bored (thus turning to their friends or their phone).
Group work is extremely helpful (perhaps the most helpful) but there are plenty of plenty of other ways to consider. The key point is to keep them actively focused on the class at hand so they will not focus on something else.

They will certainly not remain disciplined if you will give the impression of fear and confusion. Your revealed weakness (of mind) may give them negative impression that might make them courageous for misbehave etc.
So, first and above all, don't be fearful and increase your confidence level.
You should also check what possible disciplinary actions your university may allow to take against miscreant students. But definitely, it should be the last tool you may use.

Lots of great answers already but there are a few things I haven't seent that I think are important.
Establish eye contact with your students to engage them and show them that you are paying attention to them (and check if they're paying attention to you).
Walk the room, use the whole space. If you stay in front all the time, people think that can get away by sitting in the back and spending their time texting. You don't have to warn most of the time, just using the space helps to establish your authority.
If you think a student is starting to get bored and distracted from what you are saying, find a question pertaining to the topic and call on them to answer it.
Use humor. If I'm trying to start a class and some students won't stop talking to each other, I'll either just get into their conversation in front of the whole group and link it back to class somehow.
The only times I've had to do more serious discipline, it was mostly because someone had a real behavior problem (problems managing their anger, etc.) In those cases, most students will be glad that you will put the other in their place because they're likely to be disturbing the whole class.
Most schools I've taught at have new teacher workshops and there is always one about class management. I would look into it, it can't hurt!

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text:
What does my supervisor's response mean?
For my masters dissertation, we are allowed very few supervisory reviews. In spite of several attempts, only one review materialised, in which the following comments were provided. How am I to interpret this? I went over and beyond the supervisors work and made some suggestions, did that tick him off? Has he read my dissertation? or are these generic comments?
Many thanks for this. I’m impressed by how much you have accomplished,
especially in terms of data collection (although it has not been possible
for me to independently assess the validity and reliability of your data,
needless to say.)

If you have the time, I suggest you carefully read the assessment regime
that applies to assessing your dissertation, and  then rewrite and edit
until the dissertation clearly meets the criteria set out here, and
especially the ones related to getting top marks. It would be great to see
your dissertation get distinction.

I also suggest you spend more time (if you have it) at the outset explaining
carefully what your main questions/theses are, and then return to these in
the conclusions and systematically explain how you have answered the
questions/tested the theses and what your findings are.

I hope this is useful and wish you the best of luck in completing your
dissertation. Please do send me a copy of the final version.

What part of this isn't clear? You need to give us a more concrete question. All of the feedback seems fairly straight-forward to me, and absolutely nothing indicates that the person is in any way "ticked off".

How did your supervisor respond when you asked them this question? (You did ask your supervisor, didn't you?)

I think the OP is a panicking student reaching the looming deadline that can use a bit of peace of mind.

Many thanks for this. I’m impressed by how much you have accomplished,
  especially in terms of data collection (although it has not been possible
  for me to independently assess the validity and reliability of your data,
  needless to say.)

He is impressed with your progress, but of course cannot know if you have actually done any mistake. You should consider doing an independent validation of the data. If this is too much, you could do it for part of it, showing that you know how to tackle it.

If you have the time, I suggest you carefully read the assessment regime
  that applies to assessing your dissertation, and  then rewrite and edit
  until the dissertation clearly meets the criteria set out here, and
  especially the ones related to getting top marks. It would be great to see
  your dissertation get distinction.

Some universities have strict rules on how grades are given. For example, mine requires a popular summary at the beginning for passing. If you hand in Nobel prize material without the summary, you will be failed (with apologies from the professor). Verify you fulfil all these requirements.

I also suggest you spend more time (if you have it) at the outset explaining
  carefully what your main questions/theses are, and then return to these in
  the conclusions and systematically explain how you have answered the
  questions/tested the theses and what your findings are.

Obviously, this part of your thesis is lacking. Maybe related to the previous point.

I hope this is useful and wish you the best of luck in completing your
  dissertation. Please do send me a copy of the final version.

All in all, good job! I think your supervisor is happy.

Thank you for your detailed and thoughtful break-down. I can now focus my efforts on fixing these issues, without imagining a hundred counterfactual scenarios. Honestly, thank you!

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text:
My supervisor misjudges my knowledge
I started working on my master thesis a few weeks ago. When I talk to my supervisor and try to discuss new ideas she always starts to explain very basic material that is only tangentially related. Sometimes even repeating what she said in our last meeting.
This leads me to believe my supervisor assumes I do not know what I am talking about when presenting my ideas. And even worse not knowing some very fundamental stuff even after she explained it to me.
I know it is hard to judge what other people know, but this makes it very hard to discuss my thesis with her.
How can I politely let my supervisor know of the level of my knowledge to have more interesting discussions about my work?

+1 Agree this is difficult to navigate. Hard to know whether they're building up to some novel observation or not (but usually not).

Whenever I am talking with someone and they start explaining something I already know about, I tend to say "Yes, I know about that.", or simply "Yes, yes." in the most respectful way I can. It usually does transmit the message that I'm OK with them skipping that. I don't think this necessarily means your advisor thinks that you don't know certain material, but just that she is careful not to assume too much of you. Only by being explicit about what you know, you will be able to circumvent such explanations. (...)

(...) Even when experts talk about advanced topics, they tend to explain things most of people might agree are very basic. It's a rather mysterious practice!  Regarding repetitions: why should that be worrisome? It is very natural to do a short (or not so short) recap of what you have discussed last time (which may be a week back in time) just to be sure both of your are standing on the same ground.

Are you sure your supervisor has the advanced knowledge of the topic you are working on? My PhD advisor only had top-level, superficial knowledge of the basic mechanics behind my dissertation, and he would be hard pressed to give any detailed discussion on my research. I have seen this is often the case with more senior-level faculty who have a very broad range of students under their wing.

You might find this perspective helpful towards interpreting such behavior from your supervisor: When I discuss something, I like to ensure all "dependencies" (ideas/knowledge/thoughts/feelings and connections between them relevant to the final point) are in conscious focus before I make my final point. Note that just being certain that you know something is not enough - but until I have enough data points about how you think, I have to re-state things common or known to you as part of establishing the full pyramid of reasoning for my more nuanced or advanced point.

(cont.) If your supervisor is like me, then it's not about having a lower assessment of you as a mind, it's about being really careful about making sure her entire idea, including the reasoning it's based on, has been exposed to you (for me at least, this is not only to ensure full understanding, but also to increase the surface area of my thinking other minds can critically review). People like me do gradually reduce this verbosity as we start to feel a high likelihood that both our knowledge and cognition on a given topic is shared enough for mutual unspoken understanding.

Regarding repetition, it might be that your supervisor is simply recalling for theirselves what you were discussing before because they also have several other things they're working on, and thus tend to forget the small details. I've seen this quite a lot.

sorry to interrupt, but I already have a fair understanding of this topic.

Why don't you just ask her and stop building models/stories/theories about what might be happening?

@fionbio Because asking "Do you think I am stupid?" Will not yield a positive outcome in either case.
And the underlying suggestion in the answers seems to be that there is no shortcut. I have to prove my understanding and abilities to her. While this may not be the most efficient way it has the major upside of avoiding the Dunning-Kruger effect. It might be the task my skills are not that advanced as I might like to think.

Yes basically. Just wrap it. "Hey. I wanted to share a concern I have, in hopes that we can make the most use of our meetings. I appreciate the time you take in helping me on my path to my masters. I often feel during our time we are covering material that is basic for me, and I'm not able to discuss some of the more complex matters of my thesis that I'm eager to discuss with you. This is leaving me with the impression that perhaps you feel my skills are subpar. Is this the case? I'd like to understand where you're coming from so we can both get what we want."  Then listen.

I've had similar worries. Rushing too far ahead too quickly can be seen as showing off, which some will not digest well and will react with throwing basics at you back.
Having blasted my way through a similar period (I was rushing ahead) in the not too distant past, for me it slowly worked out for the best. Once I've proven that I "master" the basics, the discussion progressed to a really good intellectual level, in which both supervisor and me would freely admit what we know and what we don't.
Looped advice across meetings can be politely solved by taking meeting notes. At the next one, you can always pop up and say, "Based on the previous discussion, I have already looked at X and ... [invalidate politely] or [validate]". This will show that you've done your homework, and can move on.
Obviously this depends a lot on the person. Disclaimer: this was also during the course of a PhD degree, not a master's. I know it's not an easy advice to follow -I almost failed at it - but patience, if you can afford it, works well in this scenario, especially if your supervisor is relevant for your subject.

+1 for the great idea of having some meeting notes and perhaps summarizing from them at beginning of meeting. Sometimes faculty (even with small groups) don't actually remember the details of what they covered before. Conversations, particularly if they are tutorial-like covering basic topics,  will cover material that has been covered many times with other students over time, and it can be a bit hard to remember how far one has gotten this time.

"Some will not digest well..." Yes it is important to learn to avoid doing that in circumstances where others are likely to react that way. But having such easily pressed buttons in a research supervisor is just... not optimal.

More years ago than I care to remember, I changed departments and started working for a new manager (NM). At the same time, another person (AP) also joined the department. My new manager put a weekly meeting on our calendars for the three of us. We would go into the meeting, and NM would start asking us what seemed to me to be really simple questions - what are we working on, issues with deliverables, who are we talking to about whatnot. Really simple questions. Almost insultingly simple questions, or so it seemed to me. Hey, I'm experienced and know what I'm talking about!
I started getting irritated by this meeting wasting my time. I could have had a meeting with NM to say it was wasting my time and why am I invited. Or, as I did, I took note of what was asked and what the answers were expected to look like (yes, there is problem A, we are trying fix B, and I'm working with so-and-so on alternative path, will know next week how to resolve). Then, I went 100% prepared to perform the data dump that NM seemed to want, whether or not I felt it was appropriate.
Fast forward 2 weeks, where I had started off the meetings presenting the necessary information (and only the necessary information) to NM at the beginning of the meeting in ~ 5 minutes. No questions addressed to me. Then, AP would get questioned, and generally fumble through the answers and need direction on what to do next.
Next week, I was removed from the calendar invite. AP was not.
Several months later, NM and I had a nice conversation over lunch about the purpose of the meeting. Basically, it was to establish that (1) I knew what I was supposed to do, (2) who I was supposed to work with, (3) I could rapidly summarize progress/goals/deliverables/budget stuff, and (4) I indeed could think for my self and be proactive in getting the right things done. In essence, I had passed the test and shown that I was, indeed, and as expected, an independent contributor and good team player. And, NM remained a good manager and mentor for me, just much more hands off (unless needed!).
What does this mean for you? You started a few weeks ago. You and your work style are a complete unknown to your advisor. What do they really want? What questions do they ask? Can you anticipate what they are and how to answer them correctly? If you need help, do you ask for it? Can you describe what you are working on in 60 seconds or less?
Be proactive. Show that you do indeed know the right things and are applying them properly. Do not go there to passively answer questions. Ask for help when you need it. And, learn to deal with people whose social interaction style is that way - you will meet many more in the course of your career.

While the story is neat, I believe that everything but the last two paragraphs can be removed and the answer would not diminish in value.

@foobar - I disagree, if you are going to make a claim then backing that claim with evidence, even anecdotal, strengthens the claim. Removing that would hence weaken it and make for less of an answer.

As a supervisor, I gain confidence in my students' skills when they start producing results.  "Discussing new ideas" may or may not be an indicator of understanding. A piece of working scientific code (even a short one), a fully worked out problem (even simple one), a nicely produced graph/visualisation (even a simple one) often say more than thousand words.

While this is generally true by common sense, one must notice that it strongly depends on the area: producing a short piece of more-or-less scientific code may only just require 10 minutes of googling StackOverflow, whereas proving a small piece of a corollary of a theorem may require 3+ years of hard mathematics. Especially in Academia, results and knowledge do not always go hand in hand.

While this is generally true by common sense, one must notice that to produce a short piece of scientific code, student should do much more than googling StackOverflow: install compilers / software, find right buttons to click, understand the syntax. This demonstrates commitment that goes beyond "discussing new ideas".

@DmitrySavostyanov You missed "understand the problem", which seems to be part of what OP's advisor is expecting.

@gented I guess, "proving a lemma" or "making a piece of code" (or "writing some definitions in latex") are all similar things: concrete steps in some direction.

@AlexeyB. Proving a lemma isn't "a step in some direction", it's a result: let's not put it together with the rest (because it requires much more effort). I agree with the answer and the comments, I just want to emphasise that on the other hand one shouldn't tend to overestimate things that all in all don't really mean anything (in my opinion "finding the right buttons to click in a IDE" really counts as zero - but I might be old-fashioned).

@gented OP is doing masters. You're saying it takes 3+ years to prove something sensible in your area. Are you sure you comment applies to MSc students at all? MSc programs are usually 1-2 years long.

@DmitrySavostyanov You might have misinterpreted my point: I fully agree with your answer and I'm not stating that proving X is N-times more complicated than proving Y: I wanted to offer a side point of view by emphasising that not always the "simple steps" go hand-in-hand with "understanding": sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, depending on the area, on the topic, on the task and so forth.

@gented I shared a technique which works for me. I am not sure what you offered for this discussion apart from an attempt of passive-aggressive dismissal. Forgive me for not apologizing for believing in things I believe in.

@DmitrySavostyanov "an attempt of passive-aggressive dismissal." woow, that's a whole lot of assumptions here. As for your first sentence "I am not sure what you offered for this discussion" re-read my comments again (some users did find them useful as they up-voted them, apparently). To use your own words: "Forgive me for not apologizing for believing in things I believe in".

Did you think about the possibility that when you're presenting your ideas, some things you say gives her the impression that you have knowledge flaws in basics of the topic?
Everybody makes blunders, and they are usually overlooked during casual research discussions. However, in your case, your supervisor is about to commit some considerable amount of time to your thesis. Therefore, she has to be careful because one cannot tell if a blunder is caused by some carelessness or lack of knowledge. In the former case, going over some basics never hurts anyone. In the latter case, it is a must.
Also note that without covering the tangents, you cannot go deeper into the center.
Next time, when you're explaining something, do it as if you're teaching some freshman. Picking every word very carefully and leave no missing thing. Then you will already say what she has to say in the first place.

It is not always that research students go into "the center", but that they try the tangents and then realize another orange next to the first one is likely to be more fruitful to aim digging in. Then the supervisor is paying too much attention to the scales of the wrong orange. :)

When one is having unproductive or somehow frustrating weekly meetings with someone, it is often helpful to send a short to medium-short preparatory email.  You have to time it just right.  Say your meeting is Thursdays at 11 am.  Perhaps the ideal time to send this email is Wednesday dinnertime, to make sure that your advisor reads it either Wednesday evening or Thursday morning.  You want your email to be fresh in your advisor's mind when the meeting starts.  But you want to send it close enough to your meeting time that your advisor will not be tempted to respond via email.  It may help to state explicitly that you're not expecting a response via email.  You could even put something like "Prep for meeting (date)" in the subject line.
When you show up for your meeting, explicitly ask your advisor if s/he had a chance to read the message.  If the answer is yes, great.  (If the answer is no, hand over a print copy and excuse yourself briefly, e.g. you need to get some water.  Make sure to be neutral in your tone so that your advisor doesn't get the idea you're disappointed.  For example: "Oh, that's okay, I'm sorry, I should have sent it yesterday morning.  I also printed out my outline, do you want to take a look?"  Note, the purpose of stepping out of the room briefly is to give your advisor a chance to have good inward focus, so as to be able to take in your outline properly.  Stepping out isn't necessary with some people but it can be quite helpful with others.)
The email can be an outline of what you would like to address in your next meeting.  It can include a brief summary of what was covered last time.  It can be a suggestion for next steps.  Basically, this email pre-loads some information in your advisor's mind so that you can jump straight into productive work.
Experiment a bit with the format of this preparatory email.  Once you find one that works well, use it as a template each week.  However, once your collaborative relationship is going more smoothly, you can start experimenting again with varying the format.


text:
Advice: no reply after the 2nd interview
I have applied for a research position.  During the second interview, they told me the contact me at the beginning or at the end next week to discuss details.
“Next week” has passed (it was last week). Today is Wednesday.
I need your advice. Should I write an email and ask why they didn’t arrange the 3rd interview? Can my email change their mind about their decision? Should i wait their email? If not,  how to write a follow- interview email  politely?
EDIT 1
Follow up email
It was a pleasure meeting you and your team!
Thank you for taking the time to interview me.
I wanted to quickly follow-up and see if there are any updates on the phd position I interviewed for on 01.06. I’m very excited about this opportunity and look forward to learning about any next steps. If you need any more information from me, please let me know, and I’ll happily provide it. I have requested a recommendation letter from my employer, if you need it I will be happy to send it

This is extremely common. They may be busy (exam times in many places, you may the the second option and they are waiting for the first to respond, etc. Wait a couple of days more, and then send a polite email with more or less "I enjoyed the interview thansk a lot, is there any news on this". No one will take it badly. Don't assume they have not selected you though, they may just be slow for unrelated reasons.

Unfortunately it is common in the academia world  https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/178850/should-i-contact-the-pi-on-monday-after-the-postdoc-interview-held-on-friday-to

No, don't ask them why they didn't schedule another interview. No, don't try to "change their minds" in an email. Any of that will be counterproductive.
You can send an email, but simply ask for an update on the state of your application. You may get an answer, or not. But avoid any hint of "pressure".

It's been 3 weeks since my second interview with team. Can i send a follow up email? Could you please have a look at my draft ( EDIT 1 )? What do you think about it?


text:
Does not receiving an Initial Decision in the time estimated by the journal's editor indicate rejection?
I submitted a cover letter through the journal's website contact form (which has no option to upload a file) and recieved an email confirming receipt by the editor who stated their interest to read the manuscript and thanked us for the submission and that they will get in touch after four weeks. Next, My supervisor advised me to send the manuscript since the editor replied via email and so did I. Six weeks have passed and we haven't received the initial decision yet. Does this indicate rejection?

No it does not indicate rejection. It just indicates that they haven't made a decision yet. Assuming the editors are active, then the most probable reason is the reviewers didn't submit a review in time. Whether reviewers will submit reviews in time is not something they can predict when they said "four weeks".
There's nothing to do except wait.

Thank you for the answer.

This seems like an unusual process for a journal. I hope it is a reputable one.
I don't think it would be a rejection with no notice. The more likely reasons are a miscommunication and the editor doesn't have the paper for some reason, or an inefficient review process.
You should have received some communication from them; at least a note that it has been received. And you should probably ask for a status update, just to make sure they have it and it is in process.
Journals estimating time are notoriously bad at it, you should note.
But, also see the canonical question here on such issues: What does the typical workflow of a journal look like? How should I interpret a particular submission status?. This situation seems to be outside the common practice, though.

Thank you very much for your answer. Yes, it is a reputable journal. I even sent an inquiry on the submission status and still no answer.


text:
Submitting revised manuscript long before due date
I have submitted a manuscript five months ago and received the first decision of the journal which was "Major revision". The first reviewer recommended accept after major revision. His comments were minor except two comments that suggested we address some questions, which I have decided to leave to our future research due to their complexity. The comments of the other reviewer were all minor. I was able to address all the reviewers comments and justified the reason I left the two major comments of the first reviewer to my future research.
However, the issue is that the due date of submitting the revision is still two months from now and I'm asking:
Would it give a bad impression to the editor and referees if I submitted the revision only one week after receiving the decision?

What's the question? There's no question mark in what you've written.

The question has been edited.

" The first reviewer recommended accept after major revision." So the referee thought that a major revision of the paper was suitable for the journal and implicitly that the paper in its present form is not suitable. You have now made some minor revisions. (And explained that you intend to keep the good stuff for later papers .... ) I wouldn't be surprised if you now got from the editor "not in present form although willing to consider a new version dealing with the issues previously raised".

You are taking a risk, probably a large one, not by submitting quickly, but by not addressing one of the reviewers comments in this paper and leaving it for future work. Given that, a quick response is justified, but it leaves you vulnerable to a rejection.
If the editor, ultimately, decides that the work is incomplete for not addressing those "major revision" comments then you could well be rejected.
If you have a couple of months, then I'd suggest that you see what you can do about addressing those comments directly and explore, at least, a major revision.
The editor probably isn't going to make final decisions merely on voting by the referees, but on the nature of the comments they make and how you address them. Risky.

I  should mention that the reason why I left the two comments is that they are still open questions and merit to be treated independently, due to their complexity (I have added the suitable references justifying this claim for simpler cases) on one hand and due to the length of the current manuscript on the other.  Moreover, in the first manuscript, it was mentioned that the focus will not be on the topic of these questions. Note that there were 8 other comments of the first reviewer who have been addressed accordingly as well as all the other comments of the other referee.

That may be enough for the editor unless the other reviewer disagrees with the difficulty/complexity of settling the open questions. Take a look at that, at least, but you may be fine.


text:
Do peer-reviewers ignore details in complicated mathematical computations and theorems?
Upon reading many papers in my field, which is Mathematics. I have come across many complicated theorems and proofs in which long overwhelming computations have been done. While paying attention to the peer-review time, I have noticed that many of those papers didn't spend a long time as they should, which is a deduction I based upon the complication of the proofs present in the papers.
This made me ask the question. Do experienced peer-reviewers occasionally ignore verifying "the math", and rather focus on the validity of the techniques used in the proofs and numerical simulations (if applicable)? Since experienced peer-reviewers are very busy academics, I guess it wouldn't be possible for them to verify each point in the proof. However, by not verifying each point of the paper, including the details in the proofs, the peer-review validity becomes questionable.

Similar question (but less specific in field): Do reviewers go over the calculations (i.e do the calculations themselves) when reviewing

This is also addressed here: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/131532/19607

The answer may be field dependent.  Peer reviewers in a mathematics journal might be more careful, but I found that an appendix in an Earth observation journal where I presented a mathematical derivation was ignored by all co-authors and all peer reviewers.

CS, not maths, but my own cynical experience is that, the clearer a paper/code, the easier it is to check for correctness; the more obfuscated, the more likely one is to say 'fukit' and simply make a remark that "the organisation of code/equations is challenging and correctness is hard to verify" and leave it to the editor to decide. The exception to this of course is flagrant errors that stand out, even among badly formatted/obfuscated passages ... but even then, the authors typically reply "this has been corrected in the text" and that's about it, with no mention if analyses were affected.

Some papers report the results of experiments or simulations, in which case you wouldn't expect the reviewer to re-run the experiment/simulation. Or would you? Conversely, a reviewer is unlikely to check a long but mundane calculation, especially if it isn't directly relevant to the main result. And they probably wouldn't check every reference or read every referenced article/book.

This is generally reviewer-dependent.  The last time I submitted an article on classical mechanics one of the reviewers checked and verified 80% of the calculations, the other reviewer did not check any of them.

While paying attention to the peer-review time, I have noticed that many of those papers didn't spend a long time as they should – What’s do you consider sufficiently long here? Except for extremely short review times, review duration is mostly an indicator of when the referees had time for the paper, not how much time they actually spent reviewing. Also see: Is it possible to make a decision upon a manuscript just within a month? (I know that pure mathematics operates on longer time scales, but the argument doesn’t change.)

@Wrzlprmft certainly the timescale in pure math is longer than in the question and answers you linked, but still it would be unusual for a paper to need more than four days work to do a thorough review. As you say, the time taken for a review is mostly waiting until those few days are available (and partly that many people won't prioritise finding those days until a deadline approaches).

Checking details of a calculation are the responsibility of the author.  Not the referee.  Referees may check calculations, but that is secondary to their main purpose: recommending to the editor whether to publish the paper.

Preliminary remark
What is considered a "complicated computation" can depend quite heavily on the field, and also on the individual mathematician.
But even in fields or papers that don't rely so much on lenghty computations, there might still be lengthy technical arguments, to which the same question applies.
It think it is worthwhile to add the following point to the answers already given.
About checking the correctness of proofs and computations
In my experience many people who start out in mathematical research have a somewhat inaccurate impression of how more experienced people (well, many of them, I guess, though probably not all) tend to check the correctness of mathematical proofs:
Going through every single line of a proof and a computation is not only lenghty and cumbersome, it also tends to be extremely (and by this I mean really extremely) unreliable.
Human minds are not computers and are highly succeptible to various types of mistakes - in particular if we don't produce an argument ourself, but just read an argument that somebody else has written down.
Without a very good intuitive understanding of a proof, it is just too easy to believe that "every step follows from the previous step" - and to overlook a missing assumption in some step, or a wrongly applied theorem, or a plain sign error, or what not.
What is much more reliable (and, luckily, also much more efficient) are certain high-level checks: figure out the crux of an argument, see where a new idea enters the game, test a result against the common counterexamples which you know prevent related statements from being true, see what part of the argument overcomes, in the present situation, the phenomenon that occurs in all these counterexamples, and so on.
Personal experience
I tend to regularly find critical mathematical mistakes when refereeing papers (although I haven't counted the precise percentage where I found such a mistake) - but I don't remember a single instance where I found a mistake by checking every line in a proof, noticing at one step that "this line doesn't follow from the previous line".
In most cases it goes much more like this:
"Ok, Theorem 1 claims this and that. Under the additional assumption A, which is not there, I know that it's true - let me see if I can remember how the argument goes... Ah yes, and for this particular part of the argument I would need assumption A. Now let's see how they do it without this assumption, because this feels like quite a strong claim.
[Start to read the proof, skip the first ten lines because they contain just the usual stuff which one always does to prove results of this type.]
Ah, here's where it get's interesting. They say that claim C is true. Hmm, well, I can see that claim C, once established, will probably imply the theorem. Now let's see how they can get C without A. Ah, ok, here's the crucial argument. Hmm, but I don't understand why this should be true. Let me think again - ok, I have an example which shows that the crucial argument does not work, in general."
This can happen in many variations - but the point is always that, with increasing experience, one often does not need to check every line since one knows how the standard arguments in the field go. So instead one looks for the crucial parts of arguments where things happen that seem to be surprising or non-obvious (to somebody familiar with the standard techniques in the field).
Related
Closely related, and certainly worth a read: Terry Tao's blog post about the three stages of rigour in mathematics.

This is an excellent description of how a reviewer tracking down an error in a mathematical argument actually works in practice.

Heh. I run into this all the time at work and not in mathematics. Someone can describe to you why their machine or technology, which fundamentally shouldn't work from first principles, in fact does. They will walk you through their reasoning and it will sound like it makes sense and it's really difficult to actually refute it from that perspective...except you know that fundamentally it shouldn't work. It's much easier to approach it from a higher level, less nitty gritty view independent of the author's reasoning and then it's usually pretty easy to explain exactly why it doesn't work.

It's a lot like explaining Ramanujan summation, to be honest.

@DKNguyen Ha, I happened to have done that yesterday here. Thing is that if a result looks to be a universal result then it cannot depend on the very specific details of any particular method to obtain it.

@DKNguyen like a perpetual motion machine? fortunately in those cases, they can just build one and turn it on and notice it doesn't work.

@user253751 ;) exactly. You would be surprised how difficult it is to convince them even with instrumented clearly non-working example sitting right in front of them. It's almost exactly like arguing politics. They are also often tricky to construct since by nature are often convoluted and difficult to follow which is what tricks people into thinking they should work in the first place.

As a metaphor: "It's like getting driving directions, and the review is to see if one would be able to get to their destination using the given directions. But we usually don't actually go out and drive to full route." And the "Personal Experience" story corresponds to "Wait, there's no off-ramp from I-95 to route 20! Gotta look closer at that part.".

Here is my perspective as a frequent reviewer in several areas of pure mathematics. I cannot speak for other people so I’ll answer the title question as if it’s asking about my specific practices:

Do peer-reviewers you ignore details in complicated mathematical computations and theorems?

Utopian short answer: no
Realistic short answer: sometimes, but only to the minimal extent necessary
Detailed answer: I consider it my responsibility as a reviewer to check correctness of the results. Correctness comes before anything else: if the paper is not correct it shouldn’t get published, period, and peer review is precisely the sort of adversarial process designed to minimize the risk that authors will get away with mistakes, sloppiness and outright dishonesty (all of which are common human behaviors). Not even trying to check for correctness simply defeats the purpose of peer review.
The only exception to the above is if a journal asks me to review a paper and explicitly says I don’t need to check correctness. And that has only ever happened to me in requests for a “quick opinion”, where I knew that if my opinion was favorable then a more formal and detailed referee report would get solicited later, and that report would include checking for correctness. If a journal asked me for a normal referee report but said I don’t need to check correctness, I would frankly worry whether such a journal should exist and what the point of it is. It would almost certainly devalue my opinion of the journal and of any paper published in it. But as I said, this is not something I’ve ever experienced.
That being said, there are utopian ideals and there is reality. In reality, it is not always practical for authors to include all the formal details of their arguments and calculations (doing so might inflate, say, a 60 page paper to twice the length, ensuring that it wouldn’t be read even by the very small number of people who would be willing to read through a very technical 60 page paper). And similarly it is not always practical for a reviewer to verify all the authors’ calculations - certainly the ones that were omitted, and even the ones that were included. So the only way for me to maintain the ideals I was espousing above would be to simply refuse to review papers where I knew I could not check all the details in a reasonable amount of time.
However, refusing to review a paper could carry its own negative consequences, since many review requests are in specialized areas where I am one of only a few people (or in some cases literally the only person) with the relevant expertise to be able to evaluate the paper. So if I refuse the assignment, it would fall to someone less qualified, who would still likely not check all the details, or worse, the paper couldn’t get reviewed at all. So the outcome of refusing to compromise my ideals could be worse than if I accepted to do the review.
The upshot of this analysis is that sometimes ideals must be compromised a bit. So what I end up doing in such situations (and what I would guess all serious mathematicians do when reviewing papers for respectable journals) is not check all of the details, but check some of the details — as many as can be checked in a reasonable amount of time — and beyond that, I try to look at the broader picture of the arguments the authors are making, see if they make sense by applying my intuition and experience with similar analyses, and running various “sanity checks” to see if the results seem plausible. It is a kind of probabilistic correctness checking, which can still work pretty well (I have caught many mistakes following this approach). With the level of experience I have doing this, I would like to believe that the probability of a serious error managing to get past me is fairly small. Although it is not zero obviously (in fact let’s be honest, it’s not zero even when I do check all the details).
Bottom line, my recommendation to any researchers reading this is, do not allow yourself to be sloppy in writing your papers out of a belief that you will get away with it because the referee doesn’t have time to check what you did. That would be doing a great disservice both to yourself and to your research area. Moreover, it is bound to catch up with you sooner or later.

This seems accurate.  I would add that papers often omit details ("the proof is a routine diagram chase" for example) and I check some of these.  Not all.  Life is finite.

Indeed, in the last few decades, there has been a clearer mandate from editors to reviewers, to not check "correctness", but, more about "suitability for the journal".
This does pointedly suggest that refereed-journal-publication is not so much a certification of correctness, but a certification of having passed some status-gate-keeping.
Nevertheless, if/when the result is unsurprising, expected, and (therefore?) probably correct, no one cares too much about checking the details. No controversy is being opened. And, in fact, maybe no one really cares...
If/when a paper makes a big claim, then people do start looking critically at the details.

I can't tell you how sad this make me. It seems like a slippery slope to a garbage bin.

@Buffy, yes, I agree... The commodification of "research" in recent years contributes to this. As well as corporatization of universities... Selfishly, I'm glad I just squeaked-by into tenure before things became more ridiculous. Hard enough to do good math without contrived sociological obstacles.

... and also the saturation of the academic job market... with all of this veering off into the appearance of an absurd Ponzi scheme... Sigh.

I wonder if this has more to do with obscene review times than anything else.

@ScottSeidman, in my anecdotal observation, in recent years there is a better impulse to get refereeing done more punctually. But, yes, at the same time, ghastly computations which purport to prove an unlikely (or controversial) thing are not an attractive thing to have on one's plate...

"If/when a paper makes a big claim, then people do start looking critically at the details." To the best of my knowledge, those proofs of big claims are often built on the past smaller theorems/results. If the details of those smaller ones did not get checked, how do we know the proof of the big claim is correct? Do people also check the smaller claims when they check the big ones?

Wow, so now the editors are getting the reviewers to do their job?!  I thought determining the "suitability for the journal" was the sole discretion of the editor...

Really? I have never had any suggestion from an editor of a math journal that I don't need to check correctness as a reviewer. (I have had such a suggestion, but only when reviewing for conferences.)

I have certainly had instructions along the lines of "Note that it is not sufficient for the results to be new and correct", but being a mathematician I am not going to confuse that with "it is not necessary"!

@paulgarrett -- math isn't my bag, but if I was going to publish a paper with mega tedious derivations, I'd be tempted to provide a satellite document to assist review that can bring the referee through the doc step by tedious step, to aid review.

@ScottSeidman, the "satellite document" concept is certainly useful. And, the customs are otherwise, in math. In fact, there is often editorial pressure to remove details... which makes it much more difficult to track through things. Sigh.

It's a bit of both. First, peer review explicitly states that the validity of the statements is not being checked, and is the responsibility of the author. Peer review decides if the results are original, significant and interesting, that is all.
Having said that, many referees do check arguments. For complicated computations, maybe not every line is checked, but whether it passes the 'sniff test'. Does every line look like it follows from the previous line?
Some referees will check every detail, some will be more holistic about it.
Edit: This was mentioned in the comments, but it deserves to be in the answer, especially as for some reason it was accepted over the other, better, answers. I said that referees are not checking validity. By this I mean that a mathematical theorem is either true or false, and referees do not, and realistically could not, check every paper in sufficient detail to confirm validity. And even then that just means two people have checked it, not that it is true.
Referees are certainly asked to comment on whether they think that a paper is correct. This is a very different thing: I can make a guess as to whether the paper is broadly correct, but I might well be wrong. It is down to the individual where on the spectrum, between checking every detail and just looking over the proofs, they lie.
But very few papers over, say, 50 pages long, have had every detail checked. One of my more recent papers (among other things) corrects the main theorems of three other major papers. Two of these three papers were peer reviewed, but the errors were not caught. This is neither the authors' nor the referees' fault, as the errors were subtle and the result could not be verified computationally at the time. It was only by approaching the problem in a completely different way that the errors came to light.
Do I believe the main theorem of this paper? Of course, but then so did the authors of the other papers. Do I believe my paper is error-free? No. I doubt if any paper over 50 pages long is error-free, because humans are not error-free.

"peer review explicitly states that the validity of the statements is not being checked": really? So if I submit a purported proof of the Riemann hypothesis to the Annals of Mathematics, they won't check it for correctness, but will only base their decision on whether the Riemann hypothesis is original, significant and interesting? Sorry but I think you're mistaken about that, even in much less extreme situations. Can you provide a source showing that peer review "explicitly states" what you claim it does?

This sounds wrong to me; peer review typically check correctness of results/derivations.

@DanRomik: Opinions on this matter seem to vary greatly within the mathematical community, as evidenced by the various answers and comments to this question on MathOverflow (although I think that there's less variation of opinions when it comes to extreme cases such as the Riemann hypothesis that you mentioned).

Where does peer review explicitly state this?

What would it even mean for peer review to explicitly state this?

@JochenGlueck there is room for a difference of opinions on the precise level of effort one can reasonably expect a reviewer to invest in verifying correctness, and on whether it is the reviewer or author who bears ultimate responsibility for the paper being correct. However, OP’s statement that "peer review explicitly states that the validity of the statements is not being checked” sounds factually false to me, and not a matter of opinion.

What you are describing sounds more like the editor's responsibilities, not that of a reviewer.

@DanRomik: Agreed.

In addition to original, significant and interesting, I think presented in a way appropriate for the target audience of the journal is a factor.

Referees are to check correctness as well.  The London math society discusses this in an author guide for their journals.  "The referee will be asked to assess the originality, correctness, importance and interest of the paper ..." from https://www.lms.ac.uk/sites/lms.ac.uk/files/Publications/AuthorGuide.pdf

@Everyone I'm obviously late to the party on this. What referees are usually asked is to decide if they think it's correct. They are not asked to check if it is correct. To do the latter would require a line-by-line check, filling in any ommitted details, rewriting any computer programs that were used if they were not provided, etc. So no, referees do not check correctness. They are asked to comment on the correctness, which is definitely not the same thing. This eliminates any Riemann hypothesis issues, and anything else mentioned.

@Cole Not entirely. The editor is not an expert in every single sub-field they cover. A good reviewer is more likely to have read the latest papers and gone to conferences in their specific area of expertise, and therefore should give an opinion on the originality and impact of the work.

Oh my, "Peer review decides if the results are original, significant and interesting, that is all." This makes any use of peer-reviewed as a determination of whether a source is acceptable or not... problematic? worthless?

@CGCampbell We are long past the point where a paper being peer reviewed means it is correct. Lots of peer-reviewed papers have errors, most minor, some sink the main result.