WillOhTheWisp

I agree with what others have stated, that the fairly low incidence of faked permissions doesn't merit the additional inconvenience of requiring mod authors to jump through additional hoops to grant permission. In addition to being inconvenient, public permissions are not foolproof and I can already anticipate several problematic scenarios arising. Many mod authors may not utilize or ever even check comments or they may have comments turned off or have them locked by themselves or by Nexus staff; the mod page may have hundreds if not thousands of comments and anyone verifying permissions would have to read through all of them to locate the needle in the haystack; the mod page may become hidden and the hidden page would prevent the permissions from being viewable. I think the ideal scenario is a multi-pronged approach. The first step would be to request that Nexus add an additional permissions scenario that allows or disallows console ports. FO4 has this permission specification already. Most of the time I have found that mod authors only keep their "upload to other sites" permissions closed because they do not want their mods on Steam Workshop or any unsavory sites, not because they have anything against console modding. Many mod authors have no problem with their mods being hosted on Bethesda.net, they just haven't ported it themselves because they don't want the hassle of hosting it there themselves, either because they don't know how to port it or because they cannot troubleshoot for console-specific issues (such as editor markers, optimization to mitigate the 5GB limit, or to get around 3rd-party program dependencies). Many mod authors don't leave permissions open because they aren't aware of console modding or because they simply want to know who is hosting their mods and therefore ask to be contacted first before allowing a port. I think a private message requesting permission to port is appropriate in that scenario. The second step would be to update Bethesda.net itself to add required fields for both Author and Permissions. The current state of the site makes it very easy to forget or altogether avoid giving attribution and to side-step the question of permissions entirely. The uploader should need to attest that they are either: 1) The creator of the mod, or 2) Porting the mod on another's behalf. If they attest to the later, they should need to enter the original mod authors name and then specify the state of the permissions by attesting either: 1) Open permissions, or 2) Permissions have been obtained. These attestations should be displayed on the mod page, so that the mod users knows the port is not the uploader's work and to make permissions more easily verifiable. The third step would be to create a more robust reporting system on Bethesda.net. The current system relies entirely on community self regulation and enables abuse via mob rule. Mods are only removed after reaching a report threshold and then they are automatically removed without review. This makes it easy for anyone to go around mass reporting to force a mod's removal, regardless of the report's legitimacy. Although I think manual review of reports is ideal, I can understand if this is not feasible. However, I think that if the permissions attestations are added, that different thresholds can be set depending on which attestation is made. So a mod that is attested to be open permission (and is easily verifiable) may have a higher threshold than a mod with a "permissions obtained" attestation. Additionally, I think that there should be an option to request manual review of a mod's permissions rather than the basic reporting that leaves you just hoping that enough people report and the threshold is reached. A manual review request could still have a threshold, but just a much lower one.