Please do not feel obligated to answer every question at once, sorry there are so many. Between all the bug reports and old posts and new wiki articles talking about possible bugs or saying "research needed" I'm having a hard time finding exact answers to questions that might be obvious or easy to find for someone else.
1. Someone on a thread just prior to 44.03 said: "Start by playing 43.05 until the next bug update comes out, there is a crippling reputation bug going on at the moment in 44.01 and 44.02." Was this addressed in 44.03? (I'm guessing this could be a fix: Fixed problem with neighbors not recognizing you, including commander and other quest givers. <-- But when Toady says "neighbors" it makes me think that was a Fortress Mode bug.)
2. I like starting as outsider, but I'm never hostile to bandits and such when I go to their camp, and even if I attack one guy the others stand there, making it too easy to get early loot. Companions will aggro them (and I don't like starting with companions), but I have to Alt-Y and then I'm called a killer. Is this because I'm an outsider, or is this a known bug? I can find bug reports about this but they're pretty old.
3. Related to #2, I will often walk into a bandit camp and find goblins killing dancers. I even walked over to a tavern and saw a goblin warlord run out after a dancer and kill her. I killed him and nobody seemed to care, other than to call me a killer, even though I'm fairly sure he was some sort of criminal (I guess he could have been an insurrectionist but still...). Is this a common thing?
4. I saw in an old post
that you can get companions to stop autoattacking wildlife by changing some raws but I imagine that will require a new world? Is there a better way to do this?
5. How the hell do I get rid of companions without killing them? I made one guy a lord and he's still following me around.6. Can you be the head of an entire civ, not just a town lord? The head of the civ is an injured vampire so it will be easy if I can figure out how to lay claim to law-giver, but I imagine that might not be working.
7. How can I tell what my character's actual (combat) speed is? Is 1.000 equivalent to 1000 (people throw out numbers in the thousands when I search)? Does jogging make me faster at actual combat? I tried looking this up but the combat speed section on the wiki says: "Attack speed has been overhauled for DF2014. Research is impending." I feel like I'm just missing a button push that will tell me this.
8. I've found a lot on this but it's conflicting: If I'm single grasping a multigrasp weapon as a human (who is not tall or wide, so is therefore capable of multigrasping that weapon, but doesn't have to) is there an actual nerf to hit chance with that weapon or not? On a related note I assume removing from a backpack and having 8 singlegrasp weapons in my hand doesn't create a hit chance issue (not that I should abuse that) but let me know if I'm wrong about that.