Is this behavior in help desk expected?

Great point. I had not considered the angle you raised in the second paragraph — it reframes the whole thing for me.

I respectfully disagree on one detail. In my setup the opposite held true, though I suspect it comes down to community size.

Thanks for writing this up. Bookmarking it — the kind of thing I will want to reference again in a month.

Tried this on a staging copy first and it behaved exactly as described. Confident enough to roll it to production now.