This paper addresses the problem of automatically retrieving answers for how-to questions, focusing on those that inquire about the procedure for achieving a specific goal. For such questions, typical information retrieval methods, based on key word matching, are better suited to detecting the content of the goal (., ‘installing a Windows XP server’) than the general nature of the desired information (., procedural, a series of steps for achieving this goal). We suggest dividing the process of retrieving answers for such questions into two stages, with each stage focusing on modeling one aspect of a how-to question. .
