Do new donator statuses take into account that it only cost about $10 to $20 for some of the older donators to get their current status, and it would currently take about $800 for current people to buy the same status?
I understand you might look at it that way, but that's definitely NOT how some of us look at it. If Donator status were to be handed out to people spending only 1 BTC, I'd like my 9 BTC back.
That said, I wouldn't mind that some future categories of donation status could be made available if Donator and VIP refunds aren't going to be reimbursed and the levels lowered.
It seems silly to talk about this when the forum has more than enough in funding to take care of itself, though. We already had a slew of people donating or getting VIP status just to scam folks, I'd rather not reintroduce that and throw the forum leadership back into question like it was about a year ago.