This is one of the most useful things in Xorg, and prior to that in X11.

X11 is the last version of Xorg, not sure what you meant there.

Make it configurable, if you must, but leave us old timers work the way we have done for 30 years or more.

It was configurable and will stay configurable. The intent is to change the default.

Personally I support the change, but that might be because of my adhd making me click on the mouse wheel every 0.1 seconds.