I always felt that dpreview had too much of a focus on equipment and articles seemed to be written in order to promote the sales of new equipment rather than advancement of the reader's photographic skills. They did publish occasional articles on photography topics but not all that many.
I think the DPR user comments on articles and the equipment forums contained a lot of inappropriate comments and contentious debates where there was not a lot of consideration given by posters to other points of view. A lot of the fighting was very unpleasant to read and yet it was not moderated out. It would mean I would only rarely dare to peek into the forums, expecting a lot of insults and fights between the users of different brands or products to pop up. This isn't the way a good forum functions.
Although nikongear is quieter in terms of traffic, people tend to be more civil towards each other here. I like that. I hope now that dpreview is going down there would be more traffic here (and other cites which maintain civility of discussion). Although the forum name includes "Nikon" and "gear", many of the posters are accomplished in creating photographs and clearly are very interested in photography rather than only the details of equipment.
It is interesting that the two people who created the video reviews at dpreview (Chris and Jordan) are moving to Petapixel. I guess the videos created by Chris and Jordan can be loved or hated, as they seem to do a lot of lighthearted comedy in their presentation, but I appreciate them also talking about their impression on the handling of the products and obvious issues even of a major manufacturer's product are not left unmentioned. For example it became clear from their review of the R5c that the battery capacity was a real issue.
I read that dpreview had difficulty recruiting staff with the required skills to run their lab testing. I miss Rishi Sanyal's reviews and insights. He seemed to bring a lot of knowledge to their editorial articles. I remember when the D810 came out with its press-shutter-button-twice EFCS implementation, dpreview noted that EFCS helped with sharpness also in hand-held use (including lenses such as the 300 PF which had issues with certain shutter speeds) and that they hoped Nikon would make an implementation of EFCS that would be easier to use and I believe they said they discussed it with Nikon. In the D850, the EFCS is also available in Q and Qc modes where a single shutter button press resulted in slightly slower mirror actuation (to make it quieter but also to reduce the effects of vibration) and EFCS was available in these modes even in viewfinder photography, though fps rate was limited to 3 and timing of the shots in this mode had to be learned to get it right. The D6 improves this further by offering EFCS in Qc mode at up to 5 fps. I really took a lot of advantage of this feature. As far as I know, Canon still doesn't offer EFCS in viewfinder photography on their DSLRs (though they do in LV, and have for a very long time). On mirrorless, EFCS is usually the preferred mode of use and doesn't lead to increased delay in the beginning of the exposure (as the shutter is already open and there is no mirror to move). Anyway this was just an example of identifying a technical issue that had real-world significance and working with the manufacturer to resolve the issue. Few gear test sites have that kind of clout.
