I'm old enough to remember this behavior dating back to at least CDE on traditional Unix systems like Solaris in the mid-90s, if not earlier. It was a great feature then.
BUT...
That was back when mice looked like this! They had a literal middle mouse button. This design predated the scroll wheel, which was added much later, and merged in as an extremely awkward and unreliable middle mouse button in some cases. The old behaviors make no sense anymore, at least not as default behaviors for most users with modern mice.