Sure. That's the point behind refactoring, it makes changes to existing code flow more smoothly. But the case here doesn't fit that at all: the change as described was a change in configuration (that just happened to be stored in a code variable), yet it was being reviewed as if it were a new feature being added through development. That's the "cargo cult" part -- refactoring in the course of development is good. Rules demanding refactoring are bad, because they hit false positives (in this case, a high priority configuration change).