On testnet for this release (and maybe previous ones, I don't know, I always run a hot wallet on testnet) you have been (mostly) able to just swap in the new darkcoind, start it and that's it, the Masternode restarts itself without the 'masternode start' command being needed anywhere. Apparently this has been possible for some time on mainnet too, but I've always done the local restart thing.
As opposed to just updating the remote daemons and restarting. I found I had to issue masternode start from local for this one, although, I did get 1s from just the remote update (about 30 second downtime to update). I was going off the poolhash and drk.mn listings which made all my mn's show up as inactive but I figured afterwards it was due to them not being updated.
Elbereth and El Presidente first need to update their nodes to reflect the current state.
You can send an Inbox message to them. But I am sure they already know. We just have to be patient and if it takes so many confirmations it won't show up on those sites anyway until the confirmations are done.
This has nothing to do with confirmations. The protocol version was changed. Older daemons are not able to receive the current masternode list.
You are almost right. To be selected for payments one needs "masternode count" confirmations. But to just start a masternode, 15 confirmations are sufficient.
