Comment 19 for bug 147230

+1 for disabling it, new users don't know what workspaces are, they are simply confused when they do a tiny mouse-wheel scroll over the desktop by accident and all their windows disappear. Even as someone who understands what is happening I find that this feature often makes me switch workspaces accidentally. It's annoying.

I also think that moving the mousewheel when over the workspacea panel applet should be disabled. You should have to actually click on a workspace in the panel applet to go to it. That way you are not confused because you clicked on something and you went there, the applet now indicates where you are, and the workspace switching animation helps too. Just follow metacity on this.

OT I think the story about someone becoming nauseated is telling, the default desktop effects in Ubuntu are still over the top, they should be toned down.