I like this idea... and would also like to see it spread to the Other Users section/nodelet. With a little bit of (private/display-setting?) CSS, it could be introduced without disturbing the appearance for other Monks that don't like an has something on scratchpad indicator. Other color, slanted text, or something like that... (symbol ∅ ?) Maybe, the notion of empty scratchpad could be loosened by consists of whitespace only?

A while ago, I pondered about the usefulness of a provides any content at all indication... It is interesting to see what new initiates have to say when they join the Monastery, but checking all those entries in Newest Nodes/Users mostly is a waste of time since they lead to an empty home node.