Introduction. The purpose of this work is the evaluation of responsiveness when remote users communicate with a human-readable knowledge base (KB). Responsiveness [R(s)] is considered here as a measure of service quality. Method. The preferred method is operational analysis, a variation of classical stochastic theory, which allows for the study of user-system interaction with minimal computational effort. Analysis. The analysis is based on well-known performance metrics, such as service ability, elapsed time, and throughput: from these metrics estimates of R(s) are derived analytically. Results. Critical points indicating congestion are obtained: these are limits on the number of admissible requests and the number of connected users. Also obtained is a sufficient condition for achieving flow balance between the KB host and the request-relaying servers. Conclusions. When R(s) is within normal limits, users should appreciate the benefits from using the services offered by their KB host. When bottlenecks are formed, R(s) declines, and the whole communication system heads for saturation. Flow balancing procedures are necessary for the elimination of bottlenecks, which leads to a better resource management.