Hiatuses are the life blood of any good blog. Going dark for years at a time is a good way to find out who your real friends are. It's easy for a bunch of people to jump on board with a super-awesome blog while it's active and popular, but it takes a special breed of reader to stick with an inactive blog.
As a blogger, your main goal is always to separate the wheat from the chaff. But really, if your readers are a bunch of unfaithful trolls, what good is your blog? A lot of bloggers brag about their reader counts. "Hey, I've got 5324 subscribers. I must be pretty good." Yeah, but you've only got 5 half-decent readers. Meanwhile I have 0 readers and 0 excellent readers. Last time I checked, that's a better percentage.
