[Brian]

If we made empty projects inactive, a project you said you wanted to complete could disappear off your radar screen entirely and get overlooked.

That seems bad - I'd prefer to see something too frequently, rather than not frequently enough. The former is a minor irritation, but the latter can incur real-world consequences, like angry emails to the authors of the software that they're using, which they blame for the deadline that got missed. ;-)

In any case, if you'd like to get those projects off your active list temporarily, my suggestion would be to add a start date in the fairly short term - "friday", "next week", etc. That gets 'em off your active list for a while, but ensures that they don't stay that way too long, either.

Does that help?