1. How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

This is situational, but I would just gently remind them as soon as possible that their behaviour is a downwards trend.

Feedback should also ideally be constructive where possible, not just "hey, I noticed you said X," but to also say, "consider that Y would fit better to avoid misunderstanding", this of course requires discretion.

If they continue in that manner, despite multiple warnings we can then start to go down the typical further escalation points.

2. How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc. a question that you feel shouldn’t have been?

There may be a simple misunderstanding, and I recognise that either party might be right, but the best way forward is to first understand why the other mod did what they did; ask the other mod to clarify.

Since it's closed or deleted, there shouldn't be any urgency to act right now, so I'm happy to wait a reasonable time for their explanation.

3. Why do you want to be a moderator on PSE? What do you appreciate about the site, and what would you change if you were able to?

I love puzzles, they've always fascinated me from a young age, I appreciate the high standards and the approachable community here.

I desire make the community much more welcoming for new users and convey the rules of the site with as much clarity as possible. If given the opportunity, I would make the welcoming process much smoother so that every member feels happy to contribute.

4. How have you been involved in moderation issues in the past? Have you helped edit posts, been active in review queues, or provided help on meta, for example? How do you see your current moderation activity changing if you step into a more official and powerful role?

I help fight spam across Stack Exchange on occasion, As I said before I'm a member of Charcoal - a community team who designed a bot to detect spam on SE. I have been active in review queues also, when they still have things in them.

If I were to step into a more official and powerful role, as a moderator I would try to work effectively with the existing moderators, helping lessen any burdens on the existing mods where help is needed, and co-operating as much as possible.

5. We have a very well used site-specific closure reason for puzzles lacking proper attribution. This is the most common site rule for new users to trip over. Often it is 100% obvious that a question posted in good faith lacks proper attribution. How will you treat these questions? If you encounter the question soon after posting, with few or zero votes to close, would you use your moderator super-vote to hammer the question closed? Or would you leave it open and simply comment to ask for attribution? Or something else?

Puzzling Stack Exchange, along with the other SE Network sites, all have a Tour and Help Centre, since I'm already familiar with the Tour and Help Centre's content, I'd make sure that the user is at least introduced to that. I'd rather make sure that we both know what's right and expected from us before coming down hard. If said user choses to continue to ignore the rules many times, then since I've already given them multiple opportunities, I'd be more willing to use a "super-vote" in the case of deliberate bad-intent.

6. What are your most active tags as a poster currently - or in other words, what kind of puzzles do you specialise in creating or solving? Are there some types of puzzles that you wouldn't feel competent to deal with, if moderation issues arose that required subject matter expertise?

My most active tags as a poster would be logic and mathematics and computer science, and I would typically delegate riddles and less clearly defined problems to someone else.

7. What is your communication style online? Even though tone/emotions are not always conveyed accurately through text, do you make sure to convey politeness to the other user as accurately as possible?

Emoticons can only help convey a tiny fraction of the missing social cues. It helps to view both sides of view, and to remain calm, even if the other person is or becomes aggressive, and to use clear language.

8. Since the previous moderator election happened, the introduction of generative AI has greatly changed the landscape of creating and solving puzzles, and while the arguments at the time stated it wasn't much of an issue as the models of the time couldn't solve most of the site's puzzles or generate solvable puzzles, newer models have changed that. What's your position on generative AI content? If a user makes a post that is confirmed (via the moderator-private strong or weak indicators) to be generated by AI, would you support deleting it on sight? Any difference on handling AI-generated puzzles vs. solutions? What if an AI-generated puzzle has gotten one or more good non-AI attempts to solve it?

Woah there, so much question! [sic] I'm only a human. ;) I do agree that the rate of acceleration of AI is astonishing, I don't know what exactly is meant by moderator-private strong or weak indicators, so here's a general answer: Jude each post by the other non ai indicators first, and if there's nothing else wrong with it, (which even if a perfect AI generates perfect text, it might plagiarise a bit) then proceed with caution.