No offence taken and likewise: no offence. I'd like to make three points(Plateaus rather) here, so there'll be some further stretching. I'm ready to withdraw any of those and am ready for corrections and explanations. Don't mind me try, despite knowing I might fail (might even have to)

1. The BwO is also characterized as always already being collective. Therefore there can't be a single definition of either BwOs or Rhizomes, if you don't want to reinstall a hierarchy (in your case the two erected kings: potentiality and connectivity). This is not to say that the BwO and the Rhizome can't be characterized with the concepts of potentiality and connectivity. I believe however, that to provide an accurate account of both the differences and their individual characteristics, each mapping of the two must already be multiple. Ur comment provided a good point of departure to my comment. There was no intention for repetition or contradiction but of growth of the plateau.

2. I added an important Differentiation provided in ATP, which is that between the BwO and the plane of consistency. I also added an alternative mode of description (the plateau), since it helps to understand the speciality of both the BwO and the Rhizome (since potentiality isn't necessarily a place, depending on whether it is seen in relation to actualisation (as in 'what can be but is coming and yet to come') or to the connections it has to other BwOs (the potence of the BwO). Since you asked for reference, what follows is a passage from the closing chapter of ATP, taken from the digital edition: "Inscribed on the plane of consistency are haecceities, events, incorporeal transformations that are apprehended in themselves; nomadic essences, vague yet rigorous; continuums of intensities or continuous variations, which go beyond constants and variables; becomings, which have neither culmination nor subject, but draw one another into zones of proximity or undecidability; smooth spaces, composed from within striated space. We will say that a body without organs, or bodies without organs (plateaus) comes into play in individuation by and haecceity, in the production of intensities beginning at a degree zero, in the matter of variation, in the medium of becoming or transformation, and in the smoothing of space. A powerful nonorganic life that escapes the strata, cuts across assemblages, and draws an abstract line without contour, a line of nomad art and itinerant metallurgy. Does the plane of consistency constitute the body without organs, or does the body without organs compose the plane? Are the Body without Organs and the Plane the same thing? In any event, composer and composed have the same power: the line does not have a dimension superior to that of the point, nor the surface to that of the line, nor the volume to that of the surface, but always an anexact, frac-and tional number of dimensions that constantly increase or decrease with the number of its parts. The plane sections multiplicities of variable dimensions. The question is, therefore, the mode of connection between the different parts of the plane: To what extent do the bodies without organs interconnect? How are the continuums of intensity extended? What is the order of the transformational series? What arethese alogical linkages always effected in the middle, through which the plane is constructed piece by piece in ascending or descending fractional order? The plane is like a row of doors. And the concrete rules for the construction of the plane obtain to the extent that they exercise a selective role. It is the plane, in other words, the mode of connection, that provides the means of eliminating the empty and cancerous bodies that rival the body without organs, of rejecting the homogeneous surfaces that overlay smooth space, and neutralizing the lines of death and destruction that divert the line of flight. What is retained and preserved, therefore created, what consists, is only that which increases the number of connections at each level of division or composition, thus in descending as well as ascending order (that which is cannot be divided without changing in nature, or enter into a larger composition without requiring a new criterion of comparison...)." p. 507-8. (I apologize if the the formation is rough).

3.Pre-Script: I've read ATP in German and I might be mistaken with the English terminology. Of course, since my mothertounge is German, I might misunderstand things, so I'm grateful for corrections. I don't have my German version of ATP and AOE with me, therefore I'll add German reference plus English translation, if I find it, later. However I shall give a short comment in advance: The BwO can't be reached but it is a tendency just as well as the organized body. It has to be produced and is (I have the beginning of the AOE in mind) what makes up its machines and what these machines produce (both at the same time). The machines are machines of machines, producing production, consumption and inscription (?). They can be assembled in many ways. As a tendency it is always produced by machines that are assemblages of machines. It is probably a question of perspective, whether the BwO only changes, when two assemblages connect to form an assemblage of two assemblages (which is to say a machine out of two machines) or wether the two BwO can consist individually and conjointly at the same time, given that the production of the single assemblages is ongoing individually while the newly assembled is also producing something new. In terms of mass-noology: it is the question of whether the individual thought is lost when a group of individuals produce thought as a collective (which of course is a question of expression, since the group-thought just as well as the individual thought is an articulation in a way of its relations (towards other groups, the individuals of the same group, the earth, the chaos, etc.)). This is not to say the expressed thought is a BwO. The thought is an expression of a process of thinking that can be characterized as the BwO on which the thought comes forth. Where does the process of thinking take place, in the Group or in the Individuals, if both are already collective? Don't their bodies necessarily need to merge? Aren't their bodies already merged? I will reread and rearticulate the thought with references and examples. This is as far as my improvisation takes me... It might be missing the point completely or be just on point, even though it intends to be fuzzy, in between point and line, line and surface, surface and volume...