SiteHistory

Why Does This Site Exist?

Call it nostalgia, a hobby, urban exploration, retail history, social shopping trends - the changing of the times - whatever - these are just interesting things to some people. They don't matter to most people and that's OK. Yes, there are things that do matter or are more important - things like Meaningful Notes of Interest for example, but you know what they say about all work and no play.

This site's continued existence is serendipity in action. MallofMemphis.org started as a simple "proof of concept" test for software evaluation. The test needed some "topic" to use and the Mall was picked at random because it was topical and it's demolition just seemed so wasteful. The test site was not really intended for public use though it was open to anyone. It was not hidden, but neither was it advertised. It was just a learning trial. One day shortly after it was up and running, a few people actually started to share their memories and photos of the Mall on the site. One of the first contributors was a man who had taken pictures of the Mall on it's last day and shared them on the web.

How? The search engines (Google, Yahoo, etc) had found the site, listed it and people searching for mall-related information stumbled across us. Turns out that I wasn't the only one who was dismayed to see the Mall destroyed. So, the site test was deemed a success and was left in place - and now almost 2 years later, the stories, pictures and mementos from Mall fans keep coming!

Hackers, Vandals and Other Ne'er-do-wells

The site is open for anyone to add comments, pictures or memories. You don't have to register, provide your email or anything else to participate.

That freedom makes us an easy target for morons of course, but for over a year and a half no one had been malicious and vandalized the site.

That changed on December 21, 2006. Some visitors from the country of Turkey (perhaps explaining why calling someone a 'turkey' is not a Southern compliment) deleted portions of the site and put up their "Owned" logo proudly proclaiming they had "hacked" us.

For the record, opening and changing a web page that has an EDIT button and allows changes without a password does NOT make you a hacker. Sorry. It makes you a user. Defacing the page just makes you a rude, unwelcome user. Hackers actually have to know something about technology and use security holes or software exploits to bypass safeguards to take control of a system they have no rights or permissions to. Perhaps it was exciting for them, but the real hackers out there ought to have a talk with these wannabes.

Should this rude behavior continue, we'll just block the turkeys from being able to access the site. If you'd like to see what the "hackers" left us, go here hackers

Update - 8/10/2007 In the past few months we have had two or three persons replace actual page content with wikispam - links or other garbage. And most recently today, we had someone from a Comcast account place vulgar remarks on the visitor story page. In case you don't know, Wikis track changes - your defacement can be gone and original page restored in one click. Oh, and BTW we DO have your IP address when you do something like that. We DO put you on a block list so you won't be welcome here again or at many other Wikis on the net. Perhaps best of all, depending on how foolish you are, you could be charged with felony wiretapping and Hate Crime charges. If you are gonna do the vandal thing, better make it a good one! It might cost ya.

For the record - ALL opinions, stated in a reasonable manner are welcome. Blame the whites, blame the blacks - blame whoever you want....in langauge that would be appropriate in a debate - not an alley or gutter. No curse words, no sexual references, no derogatory words describing ANY race.

Remembering the Marketplace of the Midsouth

SiteHistory

Why Does This Site Exist?

Hackers, Vandals and Other Ne'er-do-wells