Hi Colin,
I had a good chat last week with one of the volunteers that you recruited some months ago to help with the helpdesk. He told me that he wasn't answering tickets anymore, since it is just a deluge of tickets, mostly the same over and over, and without any feedback mechanisms from the helpdesk to the other support pieces (faq, stackexchange, etc) and dev teams, there isn't really an end in sight.
I suspect I agree with him -- taking a step back, it seems wise for us to enumerate our support mechanisms, and try to prioritize and triage so we do what is most scalable and most sustainable.
That said, I don't think many of us have a good handle on where the helpdesk is right now. So it's hard for us to know where it should fit in this triaging.
Can you summarize for us how many tickets it's getting, how many (and which) people are active, whether most tickets are getting answered (and after how long), what languages they're in, and whatever other questions I ought to be asking?
Then we will be in a better position to try to help you.
Thanks! --Roger