> that's their problem not mine

IME unfortunately that's not actually the case. It very much is your problem, as the architect of the original system, unless you can get yourself transferred to a department far, far away. I've never managed that except by leaving the company.

To be clear, I don't believe it should be this way, but sadly unless you work in an uncommonly well run company it usually is.

I really can't imagine this ever becoming a real problem. Not once have I ever worked in a place where any kind of leadership would ever give a shit about comments nor anything else in the code itself. The lowest level leadership has ever gone is click a button to see if it works.

And if anyone has a problem with comments existing it's trivial to find/replace them out of existence. Literally a one minute job, if you actually think the codebase would be better without them.

This is such a humongous non-issue it's crazy man.