"Stale" was an approach developed to find a way to close requests that had been "on hold" for a long time (5+ years!) without any subsequent meaningful activity. 

For new requests, if the request is otherwise "eligible", but nobody has created any test content, we'll generally mark request as "on hold" (use "|status=waiting" in the on-wiki templates), and make a comment on the request page saying that the request is on hold until people start creating content on the wiki. Obviously, I've been working through a big backlog of requests for now. But my idea, at least—and Committee has seemed fine with it—is that projects can be "on hold" for up to a year. If after a year, no content has been created, then "on hold" is changed to "stale". If content has been created, "on hold" is changed to eligible. 

(There is one minor complicating detail. If a handful of pages is created right at the time of request, and then nothing further happens, we take that as the equivalent of "no community has come to create content", and the request can still become stale. If content continues to be added, even if only by one individual, then the project can still become "eligible".)

Is that all clear enough?

SJW