I'm pretty sure I don't know Liz Edwards. Her site was last updated around the time I was actively looking into these sorts of claims, but we probably didn't cross paths. There are a lot of people dabbling in anomalism. My sense that the site's a "trip down memory lane" comes from the way it's a smorgasbord of the things that were catching the eye of anomalists back then: Mars at the top of the list, thingies in SOHO pictures, old Moon pictures from the Apollo days, etc.

There are a lot of pictures on the page to which you linked. I recognize the first picture, of the south pole, in the generic sense that it's one of thousands of similar pictures returned by the MGS wide angle camera.

One of the things that I criticized about this kind of presentation is that the author almost never reveals the source of the image. It's easy, all NASA images have a simple image code or serial number that I can cross-reference at various archives. But Ms Edwards' south pole picture is titled only "msp1.jpg", so there's no way for anybody to independently investigate her claims.

I've processed a lot of similar MGS-WA images, and I can tell you that they're usually highly-compressed, using compression similar to JPEG that leaves behind blocky technical artifacts. As soon as you crank up the contrast you bring out the blockiness of the pixels, and that's what many people interpret as artificial. It is artificial, sort of, in the sense that the "features" were produced artificially through bad image processing, but not artificial in the made-by-aliens sense.

You did the right thing by seeking out another image (ESA) of the same region. That's one of the best ways to distinguish technical artifacts from real image content, and it also gives you a chance to look for changes over time. Note that the wide-angle images cover a area of hundreds of kilometers (making those "buildings" many kilometers in size). If you really want a close look at something, look for the narrow-angle MOC images from MGS, some of which have a resolution down close to a meter per pixel. Malin Space Science Systems, operator of the MOC, has a fairly easy-to-use point-and-click map interface that lets you zero in on a region of interest. If that doesn't work for you, try the USGS site at http://ida.wr.usgs.gov.

Lo those many years ago, my main base for my activities investigating anomalism was a BBS called Mars: A Red Planet Roundtable, run by a fellow named Terry, aka "kksamurai" or just "KK". Red Planet's still in business after all these years, albeit at a much calmer level than when we used to have impressive flame wars about this. You might check in there and ask about Liz Edwards. They may know her, or can steer you to somebody who might know her. Tell 'em Robert sent you, they'll get a kick out of that. (But please pretend you don't recognize the Zoners who hang out there--they'd be awfully embarrassed...;--) )

You can probably sense that anomalism's been a sore subject here in the past. Many of us are pretty relaxed about it, but it enfuriates some people, so over time we've gotten a little burnt out on fighting about it, and tend to let that sleeping dog lie. Tom'll warn you, as he did, when you start getting close to what makes Zoners go ballistic. Other people will keep it bottled up until they explode all over you. The fine line is just to be true to the honest scientific spirit we honor here. Nobody can sell us an anomaly, but it's not so hard to get us curious about mysteries.