I looked at the page linked to above. It says, "Since it's almost always better to visit a webpage in your browser and use the “Save to Zotero” button, the Web Page item type is not included in the “New Item” menu. However, if you really want to create a webpage item by hand, you create an empty item of another type and switch the item type to Web Page in the right-hand pane."
With respect -- and I mean that sincerely, because I appreciate all that the developers do for Zotero -- this strikes me as a user-unfriendly take. You can't anticipate all the reasons for which someone might want to enter a web page manually. Why make the user go to all this work when you could include "Web Page" in the "New Item" menu? It doesn't make anyone worse off to do so, and makes some people better off. What's not to like? It's Pareto-efficient.
If you'd like an example where one has to enter a page manually, try saving to Zotero from the web for this page from Zotero's own website: https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/item_types_and_fields. I tried this yesterday and eventually came up with the workaround suggested above, but I wasted time doing so. That didn't benefit anyone.
I can think of other occasions as well, but the larger point is that "I don't think this feature will be needed very often" is not a good reason for excluding it if including it is easy and would be the default choice, and especially if you're getting inquiries from users about it (which indicate that you might be wrong in anticipating that it won't be needed). You just can't anticipate everything.
And this is exactly why we've always avoided adding this. You're just unaware of how to properly save the page. By default, that detects a DOI on the page, as you can see if you hover over the save button. To save a webpage item instead, right-click on the icon and choose "Save to Zotero (Web Page with Snapshot)". There is absolutely no reason to create an item manually and type in metadata by hand. It's a total waste of time.
We plan to add a webpage menu item at some point — along with a guidance panel that explains why it's almost certainly not necessary — but essentially everyone who has ever reported this has had some misunderstanding about basic Zotero usage.
"You're just unaware of how to properly save the page."
I have been using Zotero for several years now and have always saved pages just by clicking on the "Save to Zotero" button. This is the first I've even heard of the right-clicking options. OK, my bad. But this response is exactly what I was concerned about: any particular example I offer, you can respond with some refutation of that example. One can imagine another example: I'm offline and making entries from something I'm reading. You could of course say, "Well, how often is that going to happen?" Not often, for sure. But I don't understand the resistance to doing something that might benefit some people and wouldn't hurt anyone. That's the key here. Nobody enjoys typing in metadata by hand and we'll always avoid it wherever possible. The person who is responsible for the "add items by identifier" function should get a Nobel Prize. But because nobody can anticipate all the times when it might be necessary or at least useful, it's helpful to have the option.
The point is that the current behavior is intended to nudge you to look in the right place -- in this case, it led you to find out about Zotero functionality that you weren't aware of, e.g. -- so there really is a trade-off. Building a UI that encourages people to work inefficiently for years is not pareto optimal.
I don't think the current nudge works particularly well (i.e., it's not welfare maximizing, if you want to stick with economics) (and, as you note, it has downsides for the edge cases where people really do need to manually add webpages) which is why, as dstillman says
We plan to add a webpage menu item at some point — along with a guidance panel that explains why it's almost certainly not necessary
Also, for this specific example, we're going to be changing the behavior on pages with DOIs to always offer the current webpage at the top of the list. That's the real fix here.
Upgrade Storage
https://www.zotero.org/support/adding_items_to_zotero#manually_adding_items
You should be saving webpages and most other items via the Zotero Connector.
With respect -- and I mean that sincerely, because I appreciate all that the developers do for Zotero -- this strikes me as a user-unfriendly take. You can't anticipate all the reasons for which someone might want to enter a web page manually. Why make the user go to all this work when you could include "Web Page" in the "New Item" menu? It doesn't make anyone worse off to do so, and makes some people better off. What's not to like? It's Pareto-efficient.
If you'd like an example where one has to enter a page manually, try saving to Zotero from the web for this page from Zotero's own website: https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/item_types_and_fields. I tried this yesterday and eventually came up with the workaround suggested above, but I wasted time doing so. That didn't benefit anyone.
I can think of other occasions as well, but the larger point is that "I don't think this feature will be needed very often" is not a good reason for excluding it if including it is easy and would be the default choice, and especially if you're getting inquiries from users about it (which indicate that you might be wrong in anticipating that it won't be needed). You just can't anticipate everything.
Thanks for reading.
We plan to add a webpage menu item at some point — along with a guidance panel that explains why it's almost certainly not necessary — but essentially everyone who has ever reported this has had some misunderstanding about basic Zotero usage.
I have been using Zotero for several years now and have always saved pages just by clicking on the "Save to Zotero" button. This is the first I've even heard of the right-clicking options. OK, my bad. But this response is exactly what I was concerned about: any particular example I offer, you can respond with some refutation of that example. One can imagine another example: I'm offline and making entries from something I'm reading. You could of course say, "Well, how often is that going to happen?" Not often, for sure. But I don't understand the resistance to doing something that might benefit some people and wouldn't hurt anyone. That's the key here. Nobody enjoys typing in metadata by hand and we'll always avoid it wherever possible. The person who is responsible for the "add items by identifier" function should get a Nobel Prize. But because nobody can anticipate all the times when it might be necessary or at least useful, it's helpful to have the option.
I don't think the current nudge works particularly well (i.e., it's not welfare maximizing, if you want to stick with economics) (and, as you note, it has downsides for the edge cases where people really do need to manually add webpages) which is why, as dstillman says