In my experience I haven’t had an issue because usually the refactorings are small. If they’re not I just hop on a call with the person who wrote the MR and ask them to walk me through it.
In theory I’d like to have time to dedicate solely to code health, but that’s not quite the situation in basically any team I’ve been in.
You should refactor as needed as you go because refactoring cases are never gonna be prioritised.
I feel like shitty sites getting too good at SEO has largely made google useless. That’s why you had to append “Reddit” to get any useful info that wasn’t from some SEO scamsite.
I enjoy OpenMW and I’m happy to host if you want, although my instance is basically just me and a few friends right now.