@mvanpelt let me attempt to clear up some of your confusion.
Board View = total number of times an overview page for a board or forum is viewed. Think of the overview page as the area you would see all the posts within a board. I've attached a screenshot example from the Khoros community to give you some clarity. The Li discussions board below is the overview page you see when you go to that section of the community. The one before that is the category where the board lives, in this case the Lithium Community product category.
How would it be possible to have no board views, but have multiple posts being read? Two idea come to mind for me: Either your users are clicking directly into the posts from an activity stream or something of the like, or through SEO. If someone searches a question, either through google or on the community search bar, they won't go to the board where that post is placed, but will get a list of similar posts on a search result. Image below (A little small but I wanted to show you more than just this return on the search).
If I click into a post from this search result, I would be bypassing the board completely and be going directly to the post. Since I didn't go to the board overview page where all discussion for Li community would be located, it wouldn't create a board view in your data set. But it would be a post read.
Does this make sense?
... View more