I'm Dan, and this is my nomination.

1. In your opinion, what do moderators do?

I think moderators have two roles. The first is to act on the community's decisions and policies, in cases where the review queues aren't doing the job - for example stepping in with reopen wars or helping turn problem users into valuable contributors.

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

I raise situations like these in mod chat. Usually it comes down to a simple misunderstanding, such as me failing to spot the sentence asking for accident speculation. Sometimes it might be that we interpret the community's policies different, and then we agree to ask for a clarification in meta, or to let the review queues decide what to do about it.

3. 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?

The same way as any other member of the community who generates arguments and problem comments. While suspension can prevent this member hurting the community (by de-platforming them), there's other options to try first, to work with the person, to let them know their helpful contributions are appreciated, to understand where the hostility comes from, and to ensure they know it's not appropriate. I've found this very effective and often makes suspensions unnecessary.

4. How would you deal with an enthusiastic user that produces mostly chaff, non-answers, or outright wrong answers but occasionally does contribute a good and useful reply?

I find this doesn't happen so much, because the site quickly teaches people the difference between good and bad answers. Often the people who think their random ideas are worthwhile additions to the site get discouraged the first time a non-answer gets deleted or downvoted: they either learn to up their standards, or they leave in a huff. If they don't, perhaps an intervention can help them see what kind of answers are useful, but if they don't learn to self-edit in the long-term, I don't want to waste four reviewers' time for the benefit of the occasional good answer.

5. In light of the site's growth, are there any long-standing policies you'd like to look at to see if they've outlived their usefulness?

The top thing for me isn't actually a policy: I'd like to see some outreach to other aviation professionals who are under-represented here, such as controllers, mechanics, and aircraft designers.

That said, I wonder if we could do better with the accident speculation policy. I don't want to invite speculation, but final reports are slow to come out, and there are a lot of purely factual questions that can be asked about accidents even when the full facts aren't yet known.

6. Being a moderator means sometimes that for the good of the community you might have to do things with which you disagree. How would you deal with such scenarios?

I've done it before and I'll do it again. It's not a problem, because it's what you sign up for as a moderator.

7. Why is this site (or SE as a whole) important to you? (Preferably in as few lines as possible.)

For me it's a place not just to get answers to my questions and help others, but to connect with aviators around the world and learn about different practices and attitudes in different places.

8. What do you think the site needs more of in terms of moderating?

9. What moderator action(s) have you witnessed that you appreciate the most, and why? Either on Aviation or any other SE community.

My moderator experience teaches me that the actions I appreciate the most are the ones I don't even get to see. I've found sending mod messages to problem users the hardest part of moderation, but it's (quite rightly) done in private, so most of the community doesn't get to see the work they have to appreciate the most.

For that reason, I don't have an answer to question 8, because if the site is healthy, it shows the moderators are doing the right things - both the things we can see and the things we can't.

10. What is your experience, either professionally or otherwise, in the Aviation industry?

As I said in my nomination, I'm a PPL student (with no ambitions to be a professional pilot). I started learning in a Tiger Moth (a 1930's biplane) but found the weather limited how much I can fly, so I restarted with the PA-20, which is much more manageable. Although I'm not a professional, I live in an area with an aerodrome and lots of technology companies, so I have a lot of friends in the industry, some who build or maintain aircraft, others who develop the new technologies that will make aviation safer and more efficient in the years to come.