Regarding:

    "- Comment strings appearing before argument lists in
    functions. I would like to see the entire protocol, 
    name and args, before reading the docstring which may 
    refer to the args."

I think writing one doc string for a multivariate function is better than having to write one for many. Check out clojure core's min function:

    (defn ^number min
      "Returns the least of the nums."
      ([x] x)
      ([x y] (cljs.core/min x y))
      ([x y & more]
       (reduce min (cljs.core/min x y) more)))

So there are occasions for this related to efficiency. Where would you prefer the docstring?