several years ago, and it may have been this board or a different hobby board, I was told that some "view" settings allowed users to automatically open the first post in their list as soon as they logged in or opened the chat room, and of course those counted as views.

Since then, when I have a choice I have adjusted my settings to keep them in a list but not automatically open them. The popularity of Facebook, though, means I have joined fewer chat rooms in recent years, so I have not had to adjust settings in quite some time.