that's the bad news: if you reload the page and don't see your avatar, it hasn't been restored. if it was a public one, choose another; there's still a possibility that you may get it back but as i said, it's unlikely. if you had a reserved avatar, you should probably resend it. a very few people had avatars that started as public but were made reserved (because no one else at all was using that av). if you're in that group, let your avatar wranglers know. it'd be really helpful if you could tell them what gallery it started out in.
what happened (techy stuff ahead, but i'll try to make it understandable):
i made a mistake, one of those unix mistakes that's really easy to make and that most people have made at least once (usually only once, because it sucks so hard to make it).
first, in linux and unix (we're actually on linux), when you delete a file it is gone. no recycle bins, just file gone. so once the files were deleted, the only hope was a backup. i turned out to have one, but it was about a year old.
in linux, btw, instead of calling things folders, we call them directories. i'm going to use folder here, but if i forget and say directory, you know what i mean. and i know most of you know that, but i wanted to make sure everyone did.
buslist.org and busmail.org both live on the same computer, but in different folders. so there's a folder that's buslist.org, and inside that folder is another for the board called phpBB, and so on.
when the board went from busmail to buslist, all of the files that make the board work had to be copied over to the buslist/phpBB folder so they'd work right. i copied the files instead of moving them just to be sure the new setup would work; if i broke it, i could just copy the folders again.
because the avatar folders were pretty huge, i decided to leave them in place instead of copying them over. in linux, you can make something called a symbolic link, which is very like a shortcut. that's what i did.
there is one huge difference between a symbolic link and a shortcut. when you look at a basic list of file names, you can't tell a symbolic link from an actual file or folder. that makes it really really easy to forget that something is a shortcut and not an actual real folder.
i forgot.
i was doing some basic housekeeping last thursday or friday. i wanted to delete files and folders we didn't really need anymore so we'd have more disk space free. one of the things i deleted was the old busmail copy of the board files.
because i forgot that the avatars on buslist were just shortcuts to the ones in the busmail folder, i deleted the ones in the busmail folder. so i killed all the avatars and because linux is unforgiving, i couldn't get them back.
so that's basically it. i've gotten back all i can, and i'm really really sorry. needless to say, this is a mistake i will not repeat. i didn't realize that i'd done it at first because the browser use to read the board at work doesn't show pictures.
deb
my friends saved my life - i love you all 
Im glad most of the avatars have made it back safely.
been making them all morning 
