I've also posted this on the community forum, but further digging on various forums has convinced me that this is a bug and not just a complaint. Apologies for the duplication.
In short: Master Administrators with Pro accounts should see the Educational Upgrade option on the site management page. It doesn't make sense that a paying user should have fewer options than he did with a free account.
The community forums show a number of instances (including here and here, as well as myself) in which fans of Wikidot's flexibility and power for developing course sites have lost access to their unlimited private users, which we need for enrolling students in a safe environment. (A class with fewer than 10 students is a rare, rare thing these days.) Yes, there are workarounds, but they don't always work — e.g. if the max enrollment has already been reached before educational status is requested — and we shouldn't need them. pieterh acknowledged back in 2009 that this was a bug that should be fixed, but current evidence (e.g. my current site, http://miller2012summer.wikidot.com ), as well as a search of the feedback site, suggests that it hasn't been.
If the problem is that Pro users are presumed to be using sites for professional, i.e. commercial, projects, I would argue in favor of creating an Educational account type — otherwise, you're going to be hurting educators like me who want to give you money to thank you for Wikidot, but not to lose what we liked about Wikidot in the first place.
Sorry for the dupßplicates we have created - the author made this entry and I made parallel another entry:
http://feedback.wikidot.com/bug:652 "Educational Status for pro lite not possible"
Service is my success. My webtips:www.blender.org (Open source), Wikidot-Handbook.
Sie können fragen und mitwirken in der deutschsprachigen » User-Gemeinschaft für WikidotNutzer oder
im deutschen » Wikidot Handbuch ?
It's not a bug at all. If someone is maintaining an education site and wants to have a Pro account or already has a Pro account but wants to use the functionality of Educational site, he/she may simply contact with us via e-mail and discuss the possibilities of tailoring the offer to fit the needs.
looks like a general problem to reach the correct "support" mail for a pro account user?
I for my owm have no idea where I have to write… ( support@wikidot ?)
Service is my success. My webtips:www.blender.org (Open source), Wikidot-Handbook.
Sie können fragen und mitwirken in der deutschsprachigen » User-Gemeinschaft für WikidotNutzer oder
im deutschen » Wikidot Handbuch ?
But it remains true that it becoming a Pro user now makes it harder to activate Educational functionality, which is a one-click operation for free-account users. This adds a disincentive for me to continue my Pro account when it expires. That seems to me like buggy behavior.
Squark suggests that we can "discuss the possibilities of tailoring the offer," meaning that it has to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis — which is a problem the one-click system was designed to solve, as discussed on the blog [http://blog.wikidot.com/blog:educational-status] by pieterh and michal-frackowiak, who wrote:
So having Pro accounts revert to email explicitly counters the goal of existing functionality. This, too, seems like buggy behavior.
If, in the end, you decide that this is still working as intended, I'd second Helmuti's point about determining the appropriate email address to use, and request that at least this information should be added to the Welcome page for admin:manage, where the upgrade link used to appear.
But I still hope you'll reconsider rejecting this bug. Because I really still think it is one.
The reason why Edu upgrade is not available for Pro accounts is quite simple. Everyone could upgrade to Pro Lite, having max. 10 members on private site and no SSL access and then upgrade to Edu, which gives almost the same functionalities as Pro+: unlimited members, SSL access etc.
Please also note that Edu upgrade is per site only and is completely independent from Pro upgrade account.
Paying customer who runs Educational project is quite a rare thing. Users, even obviosuly educational, either choose the Edu or Pro upgrade. So it's better for us and - believe me - easier for users to contact us (via moc.todikiw|troppus#moc.todikiw|troppus or moc.todikiw|troppus-ytiroirp#moc.todikiw|troppus-ytiroirp for Pro users), review the project and discuss the functions needed than to put user into the confusion, e.g. Pro+ upgrade gives you max file upload size up to 200MB, after the 'upgrade' to Edu, the size will drop to 100MB, which is an obvious diminishing the features Pro+ provides to our users.
Take a look, it's clearly stated here:
http://www.wikidot.com/learnmore:education
Who is eligible:
Nevertheless, Wikidot is trying to be flexible and fit perfectly for our users' needs and we're trying to give you the best offer we can. That's why we are not strictly sticking to our offer and also in this discussed, particular case user can always contact us in this matter.