PublishOx platform review inspired by Slavic folklore (+ video-review)
PublishOx is a fantastic publishing platform with a number of cool features.
The most important features is probably the fact that it is a crypto-agnostic platform (which means it doesn’t have its own token, but rather use the tokens provided by other crypto-projects), which makes it immortal to some extent, and that it allows to earn writers as well as readers.
I’d like to put into this tutorial some creativity.
(the overall image was created by me. All the characters/objects were taken from Pixabay, namely:
crown, clew, birds, castle on the right, castle in the middle, pigeon, tower, fluite, crossing sign, farmer, fox, flutist, izba, bag, map, owl, firebird, squirrel, prince, castle on the left, witch, trolley, coffers (with gold))
For that, I’d like to provide a set of metaphors and personifications which will allow to create an allegory related to PublishOx.
But first of all, I think I need to talk a bit about all those strange (for some users) words in the previous sentence.
metaphor
If one thing is a metaphor for another, it is intended or regarded as a symbol of it.
[Collins Cobuild Advanced Learner’s English Dictionary. New Digital Edition, 2008]
personification
the attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics to something non-human, or the representation of an abstract quality in human form
[Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd Edition, 2010]
allegory
Allegory is the use of characters and events in a story, poem, or painting to represent other things.
[Collins Cobuild Advanced Learner’s English Dictionary. New Digital Edition, 2008]
So, in a nutshell, metaphors and personifications allow us to encode some abstract information (like faith, liberty etc.) into characters/objects (something which we can see). Then we can create a story (allegory) with the help of them.
Why would we even want to do this?
Well, the thing is that
the view on metaphor has been transformed from it being something poetic reserved for literary use, to something fundamental and generalizable in our daily language and thinking (Lakoff and Johnson, 2003). The pervasiveness of metaphors has been quantified: People use about 5 metaphors for every 100 words of text (Pollio et al., 1990), including 1.8 novel and 4.08 frozen metaphors (e.g., leg of a table) per minute of discourse (Pollio et al., 1977).
Metaphorical way of thinking is deeply hardwired into our brain.
Metaphors help us to understand and remember something better.
Just think even about crypto-tokens which are represented as coins or crypto-wallets which allow to get access to them (they say that a better metaphor would be a window rather than the wallet because it allows to get access to your funds (not to put the crypto in the wallet like we do with general wallets) for more on this later). They are metaphors as well, and they help people to grasp the idea of the crypto better (without the need to go into technical details).
The thinking itself (according to some theories) happens with the help of images (2D/3D) [2]
That’s why in this tutorial I’d like to represent/encode different aspects of PublishOx into characters/objects of Slavic folklore in order to create and tell a story/narrative.
And the cool thing about stories is that
Stories up to 22 times more memorable than facts alone
(source)
Jennifer Aaker (Professor of Marketing at Stanford Graduate School of Business)
So, let’s go.
To give you an idea of what I mean by Slavic folklore, you can watch the following fairy tale called "Иван-царевич и Серый волк"
Here it is on Wikipedia
In a nutshell, Tsarevich Ivan is a son of a king. He needs to do some tasks for his dad (like finding a firebird (and bringing it to the kingdom of his father) and travel to another kingdom.
This is the story I’ll use (with a lot of modifications) to create a fairy tale about PublishOx.
The user of PublishOx will be represented as Tsarevich Ivan. And he/she will travel to PublishOx kingdom to do some tasks, get some rewards etc.
You can think of all this as a computer game where you are the main character, you have some objects/skills and you have some missions to do to get/achieve something.
You, probably, heard that users joining different social platforms say in their Introduction posts sometimes that their journey begins.
In the case of this tutorial it is going to be a journey in a literal sense.
Below you’ll see the image with whole story represented.
Right now it might seems crazy and non-sense.
But this all will start making sense soon.
So…
In the context of PublishOx kingdom you can be (in no particular order)
1. content creator;
2. A web-site owner (PublishOx provides you an opportunity to use their widget which helps to turn your web-site into Publish0x-friendly one)
3. An Ambassador;
4. A reader;
5. One of the PublishOx Team;
6. A Sponsor/Advertiser (those who give crypto to PublishOx team to form a rewards pool for users)
Here’s metaphors for the aforementioned roles:
(the overall image was created by me. All the characters/objects were taken from Pixabay)
Please, note that the Dragon (which is quite often used in Russian folklore as Koschei) despite his look play a number of positive roles in fairy tales.
The user
The user (Tsarevich Ivan) of PublishOx can be a Content Creator, Web-site Owner or an Ambassador.
(the overall image was created by me. All the characters/objects were taken from Pixabay)
Note that the user is represented as Tsarevich Ivan, it’s just the roles he can play (and the skills he can demonstrate) are encoded as a farmer (Content Creator), a flutist (Ambassador) and a crown (Web-site Owner).
So, let’s consider the 1st piece of the image.
At the beginning of your journey I’d suggest to think about the wallet you’ll use.
Metamask
Note that I’ll talk Metamask in this case. Metamask is represented as a fox with a bag.
Currently PublishOx supports only Ethereum-based tokens.
(the ball image was taken from Pixabay)
Note that we will not store tokens in the bag. As it was mentioned above, a better metaphor for a wallet would be a window, so we’ll use a crystal ball (that is used by witches to predict the future or to know what’s going on in different parts of the world; just like that, so-called wallets help to see what happens on the blockchain, well, and they help to do some actions with your assets) which will be stored in the bag.
By the way, note that Metamask developers use the fox as a symbol (don’t know if it has any metaphorical meaning, though) for their program. And a lot of other software programs are associated with animals or objects because it help to remember the product.
For more details, please, see the video below.
The clew you see near the Tsarevich Ivan is used in fairy tales as a tool to help the characters to navigate/to find the right direction. Just like that, PublishOx support resources (Telegram, support@publish0x.com, FAQ) is the best way to navigate throughout the PublishOx kingdom in the right direction.
Once you’re done with Metamask, you’ll need to register on PublishOx (which you can do at the home page (“Sign up & Earn crypto” button) and be approved as an author by the PublishOx team (but, of course, you can register without Metamask as well).
The journey starts (see the green number 1) when you move from your own kingdom (see the castle on the left), crossing the border, to the castle of PublishOx kingdom (on the right) (see the green number 2).
That’s where you can “negotiate” your application as an author with PublishOx team (which is represented as the black Dragon with yellow eyes).
Ambassador program
To join an Ambassador program and get the Website widget you‘ll need to go to Dashboard.
The castle on the right represents the part of PublishOx interface with the Dashboard.
The castle on the right represents the part of PublishOx interface with the Dashboard.
That’s where you can
a) create the widget
which is represented on the image as a firebird, because when you bring it to your house/castle it light up, so that your environment gets styled in a way defined by the properties of the firebird. Just like that, PublishOx widget helps to make your web-site look in PublishOx style.
For more details, please, see the video below.
b) get your ambassador link and TIDs (Tracking IDs)
Once you have it, you can add it to the URL-address of the posts you share to get some rewards.
For more details, please, see the video below.
The Ambassador role is represented as a flutist (see the green number 3) because flutists (and other musicians) share their music (and stories) with the audience. Just like that, you will share URLs with people on different platforms to attract potential users to PublishOx. Also you can see apple trees (top right). That’s the potential content flutists could attract to PublishOx.
So, now you have Web-site widget (represented on the image as a firebird), Tracking IDs (necessary for Ambassador role).
Lets’ move on.
As a content creator
you will be represented as a farmer (see the green number 4), because it’s a farmer who plants trees (apple trees and oak trees in our case) which give crop (apple/acorns in our case used as a metaphor for our content/posts) consumed by other people and animals (just like readers read/consume content on PublishOx). Note that PublishOx allows us to create several blogs (different trees (apple trees and oak) represent different blogs created by the user).
Readers (consumers of the content) will be represented as animals (squirrels and birds who eat acorns and apples).
Editor
To write a post on PublishOx you’ll use an Editor (see the green number 5).
It’s represented on the image as an izba because that’s the place where the Baba-Yaga (witch in Russian folk-tales) lives (who flies with the help of a broom; top left).
Baba Yaga usually helps characters in fairy tales to get some tools they will need in their journey.
And the Editor is actually a set of different tools for editing.
As for free images and music sources, I’d recommend:
for images:
pixabay - https://pixabay.com/
unsplash - http://unsplash.com/
for music:
Welcome to TeknoAXE Royalty Free Music! All music hosted here is covered under CC 4.0. There are 1564 music tracks here and new music is added to this site every week.
(source)
That’s were I’ve got the music for the video-review given at the end of this post.
The end of the user’s journey is shown on the left.
That’s the place where he might have his own kingdom with the castle (his own web-site).
And that’s where the firebird (PublishOx widget) might come into play.
The role of the Web-site owner is represented with the help of the crown.
Tips model
Now, you plant the trees/grow the crop (like apples and acorns), great.
But where does the money come from?
Well, as it was mentioned at the beginning of the post, PublishOx is crypto-agnostic.
Their rewards pool is formed by the advertisers/sponsors.
Those projects get exposure in exchange for helping PublishOx with the rewards pool.
The readers can send the creators a tip with the help of a tool (tipper) located at the end of the post.
The tip is a micro-payment.
Now is the time to connect your Metamask ETH-address to PublishOx.
For more details, please, see the video below.
Note that when users tip you under your posts, that micro$ doesn’t go directly to your address on-line.
It seems more like an instruction for PublishOx team on what amount of their rewards pool should be allocated to you.
(that's why you see a separate coffer on top of the image below)
What was said above is summarized on the image below.
Sponsors (see the green number 7) give PublishOx their crypto (represented as coffers (with gold) moving to the PublishOx castle).
Information about the tips and $ received for the Ambassador’s role is transferred to the team. And that is represented with the help of pigeons.
To withdraw your funds you’ll need to go to “Payments” section in the “Dashboard” (once you have enough for withdraw feature to be activated).
Notifications feature
Now, there’s notifications feature on PublishOx. If someone follows you or publish his/her content you get notifications. That’s represented on the piece of the image below.
The notifications feature us represented with the help of owls that transfer messages (see the green number 8).
Content on PublishOx
Fine, finally let’s talk a bit about the content on PublishOx.
Well, it’s pretty clear that PublishOx is primarily for crypto-related content.
You can explore it with the help of “New”, “Popular”, “Explore” and other tabs (it’s pretty intuitive) (also you can just click crypto-icons on the top to get details about the project and content related to it).
That feature is represented by the tower on the top right (see the green number 9) because it’s a tower which helps to explore the horizons/environment.
Mentality
But any kind of content can be published as long as it’s yours or you have permission to publish it.
The choice is yours (it’s represented as a crossing sign before izba). You can try to violate copyright-related laws and intentionally publish someone’s content to get some extra $ 2-3. But does it worth it? This can ruin your reputation, trust, and you can be removed by the team.
Video-review
Important:
the music presented in the video ("Climing a Square Tree") was taken from TeknoAxe and is under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
(the image in the video with the firebird was taken from Wikipedia (Public domain))
#/media/File:Firebird.jpg){kind=link}
And I’d like to mention that aside from the opportunity to get some $, PublishOx has a great content and some information provided there may be very helpful (sometimes it’s information which is the “gold”). And you can also find some friends on the platform (even though it’s not a social platform).
References
Russian version of the tutorial is coming soon.*
All images (without the license specified + those from the film)/videos are used under the doctrine known in USA as "Fair Use" (similar doctrines are used in other countries). For more information visit the US Gov website
cool tutorial, you have put many thoughts into it :D
still publish0x is too centralized for me..^^
@tipu curate
Upvoted 👌 (Mana: 0/15 - need recharge?)
thanks for the compliment and support
agree, PublishOx is centralized.
and I believe PublishOx is one of those rare cases where centralization was the right choice.