When I first started less than a month ago, this payout system was insanely confusing. I had to re-explain what the payouts "actually" were about three seperate times to my friends because my understanding was wrong. I initially thought it was in $USD, then in $SBD, then in $SBD (but 50% was $SBD value in STEEM, $USD value in STEEM). It confused me for the longest time.
Thank you for organizing such a clear explanation for Steemians! This will definitely help people, and will be my new go-to resource to link to friends who ask in the future haha
I personally think that it shouldn't list using the "$" symbol, since it's so commonly associated with USD. I think they should do "$SBD" and "$USD" when they mean each currency respectively. Overall, I think the 50/50 payout should be displayed on interfaces as "$14.5 USD", and be togglable by a click between a USD/SBD/SBD+STEEM payout displays. It definitely needs to be a bit more clear and explicit with what it means.
That being said, I mean this from a display perspective. I understand why the blockchain itself does the math in SBD. I just feel that the user interfaces themselves should display it to the user in a few more ways that are each explicit with the units used.
EDIT:
Honestly, I don't even think the default value should be in $USD either. The value changes in the first seven days so it's not really an accurate representation, and as much as it's cool to see the fully transparent value, I think the default display value should be in upvotes or some imaginary scoring system like Reddit's karma. Imagine if the interface defaulted to a Weighted Upvote score, where each upvote was weighed at log(sp) where sp is a users STEEM POWER. So 10 STEEM POWER means your upvote is worth 1, 100 SP means it's worth 2, 1000 it's worth 3, etc.
This weighted voting is unit-less then and just becomes a magic number so people can look at it and gauge a posts popularity, without some $USD/$SBD value being thrown in their face. However, clicking on that number cycles it, so clicking it would go WeightedUpvote->$USD->$SBD->$SBD + SP->WeightedUpvote->...
I think it would just overall be more user friendly, newcomer friendly, and then lets people get more explicit information about currencies when they choose to see the post in that format.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply @carsonroscoe! Glad this post was useful / also helpful as a thought experiment. It would be interesting to apply something native to Steemit, perhaps it's simply "Steem" and you can enlarge a mini pie chart to illustrate how the post is actually being broken down. We definitely could use a nice and user friendly solution :)
I like that idea. Some sort of Steemit unique ranking system, but the mini pie chart illustration for payment breakdown would be a nice touch. I think it would be really important to keep the static look clean and user friendly (such as a simply ranking number), but have all important technical information accessible on the page in 1-2 actions away (like a hover pie-chart is just one action, hover over it. Really conveniently done).