Why are Answers HQ members forced to start over?

Bahamuta  The Sims forums were made read-only and many threads migrated here.  That's why some people showed up on this site with stats already.  Answers HQ has not been migrated, although that may happen in the future.  In the interim, there isn't any AHQ-related data on this site at all and therefore no way to grant stats based on AHQ activity.

I will say that the migrated threads don't affect the badges here.  I believe at least a few hundred of my posts were brought over, but I started out with zero posts, officially, and didn't get any badges for replies or likes or posts read until I earned them here.  (My profile shows a number of likes from the old forum, but those clearly don't affect badges here.)  The anniversary badges correspond to when I joined the official forums, not AHQ.

I have no idea whether AHQ badges will be migrated, but if threads move over, you may get at least some of your stats back.  However, that's speculation at this point.