Linux

I use both a pc and Mac, as well as my phone and I just get mixed up all the time. Gives me something to think about.

No I don't on pc. It feels more natural to do reverse scrolling for me on a mouse. On my laptop when I use a window manager it defaults to reverse scrolling, but when I switch to a desktop environment it defaults to natural scrolling, so I just go with whatever the laptop gives me on the touchpad.

I'm glad someone else feels opinionated about this! It seemed to me that everyone I come across these days only knows "Natural"!

The normal kind! ;)

I noticed this in video games rather than on-screen text scrolling. Some of them had a weapon selection, but instead had mouse-wheel-down "decrease" the weapon slot, and mouse-wheel-up "increase" it. However, the game also used the mouse wheel for other things, thus changing it to my preference had some unexpected side effect.

In any case, mouse-wheel to scroll view works because of the mouse-pointer paradigm. Move both mouse-wheel and mouse in the same direction, and the pointer is further along the content. Move them in opposite directions, and the pointer tends to hold position relative to content.

I grew up with traditional/viewport scrolling but IMHO it was better suited for single-layer, static layouts. Natural/content scrolling has the advantage in modal, dynamic layouts with nested scrolling context, which are now the norm.

Explanation: once we introduce multiple layers of content overflow, scroll events control (at least) one active context inside the viewport. Boundaries of scrolling contexts can be ambiguous, especially when scrollbars are hidden. If the user must “move the viewport over the content” but can’t easily predict which viewport will move, the interface will feel less intuitive to them. Natural/content scrolling bypasses all that: forget the viewport, forget active context, just focus on the content and move it around to see what you want.

This is how I learned to stop worrying and love natural scroll.

I use a rotary knob for scrolling since I don't own a mouse

Natural, but I use a touchpad.

At work I sometimes switch the scrolling over to traditional. Others get completely thrown out and cannot grok it! 😂