The QA paradigm was influential at the simple database system level at the start of semantic information retrieval: seeGreen et al. (1961), Marill (1962 cited by Minsky, 1968 and especially Black, 1968) and Robinson (1965). This research was based on the logic of Quine (1959) and considered what “amounted to” a satisfactory answer to a given question. A more mature version of the logical paradigm, erotetic logic (developed by Harrah, 1961) gives us a richer picture of this question satisfying. In this paper, we use Harrah’s erotetic logic to develop an abstraction of the information-seeking processes in complex distributed knowledge systems, whereby the client-server process is envisaged as a series of questions and answers.