To avoid surprises, many server owners will ping mod versions in their config, preferring to have a human in the loop for updates.

Parsing an existing server config is pretty simple due ot it being JSON.

Parsing the current workshop pages for mods is possible, but brittle and complex.

It would be preferable to have a REST API of some sort, where, given a mod ID, one can retrieve at least the latest version of the mod. Ideally, it would also supply the associated changelog. Cherry on the cake would be to just have an API for the changelogs of a mod, and doing the sorting/handling of them client-side.