Well that shouldn't happen either. If they can't restore you're original membership, then at a minimum they should restore your ranking. It should be easy to just look at the archives and find your original name . . . the post count and ranking and restore at least that much to you now. It means something when you've invested some time here and helped others or asked really good questions. I'm sure these folks are going to make this right one way or another. They said they would and I know they will because they're cool . . . 
Absolutely correct, that suggestion is clearly a distant "second" option for that reason and a host of others that are related to it. I think we're all hoping they're able to restore all the original accounts. However, it "may" come to pass that they are gone. In THAT event if they can at least restore people to the ranking they had before then it won't be a total loss but even that may not be possible. There's not too much more we can do other than give this a little more time.
Just to keep things in perspective, this is a relatively new forum where things are still being adjusted. I belong to a photography forum where many YEARS of members postings and data suddenly got lost and even the backup got corrupted and would not restore! The web master there was sick with grief and heard a barrage of complaints from many hundreds of people. I felt really bad for him but that's life and he had to just start anew and go forward with what he had. We all learned to just accept it and move forward. I'm hoping that's not the case here, but if it is . . . and this too shall pass and we'll all be OK.
