Marking empty pages as "fertig" (=done) is/was simply a convenient way to announce that
the pages in question don't need further work. De.ws has handled empty pages like this
for a long time, way before the introduction of PR2.
It's not a ploy to inflate statistics. I don't think this thought ever occurred to any of us
and it would be kind of useless too. The number of empty pages isn't that high.

Personally, I don't mind a new category for empty pages. But I don't really like naming it
"without text". Often there is text, it's just text we don't need. Handwritten notes from
previous owners, library stamps, ads etc.

 Tosca @ de.wikisource