I think it's an awesome idea. It would take away some of the stress from higher ranked staff in regards to actively looking for violations, and a great way to see first hand the responsibility and maturity of potential moderators.

Question, when will these applications be open and how does one go about applying?

the DFA is planning on opening applications before the release of the site. However we are unable to give an exact date at the moment.
We plan for the application process to occur on the official Weasyl forums and would need that site aspect functional first. We also plan on having our first ferrets as Beta testers and will need to develop a special procedure for selection as we would not have weasyl history to help us.

rest assured we're working hard to open applications to the public, and when we are ready to take on our first Beta Ferrets we will post an announcement detailing the application process

Sounds reasonable and awesome :3

Cool. I might apply.