zbib.org just says "An error occurred..."

edited January 13, 2024
Hi, I was directed to "zbib.org" as a way to convert URLs to citations. But whenever I try it, the message I get is just "An error occurred while citing this source."

Bit of a vague message. More info to the user would be helpful: What is the nature of the error that occurred? What can I do to try to resolve this?

An example URL that produces this error message is http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/nvidia-brings-generative-ai-to-npcs

...which is a valid URL for a website that is up and running.

So is zbib.org is down, or no longer supported?


Here are other URLs I'm trying. They give the same error:
https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/nq2hse/tesla_model_3_display_bug_showing_constant/
https://store.upperroom.org/product/singing-the-faith
https://keyboardimprov.com/igor-stravinsky-on-creativity-and-freedom/
https://ai.meta.com/blog/ai-alliance/


Perhaps, if someone can't offer a fix, then share an example of a URL that does *not* generate an error?
  • ZoteroBib is still supported and still functional — you can test with URL for this very page. But the sites you're trying to save are all going out of their way to block automated requests, mostly using a particular service for bot protection that's become more common.

    We'll see whether there's anything we can do to get around these blocks. In the meantime, if you're predominantly saving URLs rather than identifiers like DOIs, you might want to consider using the Zotero Connector, which runs as a browser extension and can save data for anything you're viewing, rather than ZoteroBib, which has to make requests from cloud servers that are more likely to be blocked. The Zotero Connector can save either to the Zotero desktop app or just to the Zotero online library, and you can generate citations from either of those.
  • edited January 15, 2024
    Thanks for your reply! I couldn't tell what was going on given the ambiguous nature of the error message. I'll keep going and try some other URLs, and/or using Zotero Connector instead of zbib.org

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