The question What is a Pedersen commitment? was closed as off-topic, with justification that is is a "Requests for literature, software or similar recommendations", when I do not see that it is.
I understand that perhaps we want to exclude overly basic/vague/broad questions like "what is a bit?". But when the term is crypto-specific and not widely known, do we want to exclude the question, assuming that it is not a duplicate?
I believe it should be on-topic, as the implicit question is not just what does the term mean, but how does it work, what is it for, etc. I asked a similar question about the wide-trail design strategy, and it was not closed despite me effectively asking what it means. While that specific question is phrased such that OP may be asking for a literature request, it could be easily edited to hold the same meaning while asking us what it means instead of asking us to find a resource that explains it.
I believe this view is backed up by the fact that you were able to write a useful and descriptive answer without resorting to providing a link-only answer simply giving a literary resource. The reason request questions are off-topic is because they tend to generate lists of links that may or may not be relevant a few months or years down the line. Clearly, you were able to answer the question without links.
I would agree with you, that questions like this should generally be on-topic. The specific question is actually quite bad. It shows a severe lack of research, as the author did not even seem to realize that "commitments" are a more general concept. This meant that — without realizing — they basically asked two questions in one. Namely
What is a commitment scheme?
and
How do Pedersen Commitments work?
But questions like that with good answers are actually good to have around. They help people who are doing their research, and they can function as convenient references when answering more complex questions where, e.g., knowing what commitments are is helpful for understanding the answer.
To clarify, I had 4 reasons to close vote that one:
I'm not going to repeat all the details noted in our help center. I'm merely going to give a heads-up on things.
We always tended to require people to do a minimum of research before asking. When questions are asked, we expect people to describe research efforts and/or where exactly they got stuck trying to find an answer themselves.
The reason for this is simple: we're a Q&A site! We're not a forum, nor a wiki site, and certainly not a replacement for a search engine.
Want to read up in Peterson commitments? Then do so. There are papers and sites out there handling/explaining/defining them.
If you then get stuck somewhere trying to understand them, tell us what you grasped and what you didn't, and you're bound to get help here.
That's how it worked up until now and how we safeguarded the site from low-quality, no research, one-line questions. I don't think we should change that as it would open the door for hundreds of such one-liner questions. Those would definitely not be asked if appropriate research efforts would have been undertaken before bluntly taking a shortcut by asking here.
But when the term is crypto-specific and not widely known, do we want to exclude the question, assuming that it is not a duplicate?
If you take a look at the question you've linked to, you'll notice it merely states
I couldn't find any answer providing a high-level overview on what Pedersen commitments are or what they are used for.
No reference, no paper mentioned, nothing. Also, there is "no problem to be solved" (as the help center states somewhere when talking about how to write a good question). It practically asks for a TLDR or pointers to such, probably to skip own research efforts.
As stated in our help center:
... please provide an indication of what you are not understanding/need clarification on and your attempts at solving it, so we have a clear indication of where you are stuck. This goes for all questions, not just homework. If you have just written out your assignment, your question will be closed...
We have other questions at this site asking similar things — and they are all on-topic as they contain research effort descriptions, links to papers, or at least a "I grasped X but got stuck at Y".
So, wrapping this up: generally such questions are on-topic — assuming they do not lack quality, research efforts, et al.
The example you point to is a bad one as it is a one-liner not meeting a single perquisite.
Now , OP of the linked question can still save his/her question and pull it on-topux by editing it… but up until now, that did not happen.
As described above, the linked example question is a bad example as it is low quality and — according to our help center — a so called "bad question". Therefore, I keep my vote as-is.
But generally, questions about specific cryptographic terms are on-topic — assuming they do not lack quality, research efforts, etc.
Of course, other users are free to disagree and vote to reopen… but before doing so, take a minute to think about the consequences. After all, allowing such low quality, one-line questions would contradict the descriptions contained in our help center, and it certainly contradicts how we've handled such questions ever since our site came out of beta.
I believe they should be on topic, but for slightly different reasons as I see value in reference requests. One of the challenging things about cryptography is that many of the terms are specific to the field. I often find that terms that we used in mathematics and quantum mechanics have very different colloquial definitions in cryptography and it's taken me a long time to learn how to "correctly ask a question".
Another note, we do have tags for "literature" and "reference requests", which is probably because things in cryptography are much more difficult to find than other topics that I've come across. Part of this is most likely due to what I describe above, which is people have not agreed on the lexicography of cryptography. When I see a question closed due to a literature or reference request, it makes me wonder why we even have those tags if it is indeed a valid question. On more than one occasion, there are notes such as "because I was at that conference", and the proceeding weren't necessarily available: poncho for AES, me for NIST 8114, etc. For these reasons, I see value in reference request, even at the risk of them going out of date.
