I'm phantom42, and I approve this message.

How, if at all, would your new insta-close powers affect your current voting habits or activity?

Less than it would have even just a few months ago. Anyone who obsessively watches my review habits would notice that I've actually been skipping more and more review items lately. Not because I'm trying to shirk my duty, but because I've only been reviewing things that are very black and white to me. If it's a gray area, I've been skipping it to allow it to go to other users who hopefully feel stronger than I do.

As a moderator, I would follow this line of action, allowing the community to largely police itself, stepping in with a binding vote if there is absolutely no question in my mind.

While you don't have to know the subject matter to be a mod, often it helps. Are there any major tags with which you have little to no affiliation with, and what will you do in the event that a questionable flag was made in an area where you have little expertise?

Thanks to the Internet, I'd never say that I'm completely ignorant of any tag or work that comes up on the stack. That said, I (and I admit this knowing that it may hurt my chances of being elected) am not a personal fan of Doctor Who, and I have not watched/read the Game of Thrones books (though, we have Season 1 sitting on our shelf to be watched in the near future). For questions on such subjects, I'd do what I do whenever I don't know something - some quick research. If after some basic research I still don't know enough to make an informed ruling, I'd check with other mods and the group in chat who are often able to help out with such things.

Sometimes people may become unhappy with the moderators (on this site or other sites on the stack), these people may even be active and avid members of the site. If they become unhappy with your moderation and start voicing their malcontent, how will you handle the situation?

First, converse with the user to truly understand what it is they're upset about. Explain my own position as best I can in hopes that we can at least come to an understanding. I'd also double-check with the other mods to make sure my understanding of policy and protocol was correct. If necessary, I'd take it to Meta to find out if the community believes the policy needs to be reconsidered.

What current policies do you believe are too strictly enforced (either by mods or the community)? Which do you believe are not enforced strictly enough?

While I'm generally one for closing dupes, I believe we should let non-confirmed Story Identification questions lie until we can truly label them as confirmed duplicates.

While subjective questions are often treated correctly, I personally find the exception to be "suggested order" questions which I feel are too subjective and feel that they should be closed. I do not, however, vote to close them, as current policy is to leave them open.

List questions tend to be to quickly shut down regardless of how finitely scoped they really are. It's certainly a fine line sometimes, but I feel a lot of people are a little trigger happy with them sometimes.

What time zone do you live in? When (UTC) would you be active on the site, moderating?

I'm on the East coast and am at my computer from 8:30am to 5pm on weekdays aside from short breaks. During this time, I almost always have the site and chat open in a set of tabs. While I am less active in chat afterwards, I check in frequently through the evening up until usually 11:30 or so. Weekends are a little more sporadic and less standardized depending on weekend activities, but I am stopping by to check on the site and review queues anytime I am near my computer or have time to kill on my phone.

A typical moderator on a Stack Exchange website commits to checking in regularly with the site, managing sometimes difficult decisions, for a period of several years. While they can take breaks, and occasionally receive help from the community team, most of the time it is up to you and the other moderators. This usually requires checking in to this site for moderation purposes around 3-4 times per day, on most days throughout the year. Are you prepared to make that commitment to this site?

I came awfully close to a 365 day streak of logins, being broken only because of a work trip that kept me away from the site for too long. I'm married, but have no kids. The SF/F stack is one of my personal hobbies that I always enjoy coming back to.

One of the most difficult flags to manage is the "This is not an answer" flag for answers. How will you manage these flags?

Even reviewing these as a non-mod is difficult for me. To me, if the answer is technically an attempted answer, but just really low-quality, it should remain, and a comment should be left trying to encourage the user to improve it. Answers which are just comments/replies with no attempt or indication of an attempt to answer it should be removed.

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?

Discretely.

Chat with the user privately to explain why the behavior is problematic and why/how it is causing issues. Try to find a happy medium so the user does not feel unduly burdened or restricted from having fun, but does not incite other issues.

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

I'd message the other mod to try to get an understanding of their thought processes. If, after discussing with them and other mods whether or not the action was correct, it may be time for a wider community weigh in on whether or not policy needs to be addressed.

Given hypothetical absolute authority, what current community policy/policies would you reverse or otherwise change (regardless of community consensus)?

My two pet peeve types of questions are suggested order and shopping questions. I don't feel either are good fits for the main site.