Borg Wikipedia
1. Assimilation
The Borg are already known for the assimilation ambitions, but did you know that Wikipedia assimilates content at an alarming rate?
It happened to me, it happened to others. Someone creates a new article, adds a couple of links (resources). Later some Administrator (read Borg Queen) removed those resources and labels them as spam.
Sometimes the Wiki-Borg get even more aggressive and assimilate content directly from other peoples space without permission.
Source:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/content_copywriting/3429096.htm
Just as the Borg, Wikipedia seeks perfection by assimilation and neither are ever going to be perfect, since they assimilate a whole bunch of crap along the way and since both have a hard time telling the crap from the good stuff. Everything found on Wikipedia can be found elsewhere. Wikipedia is simply an aggregator.
2. Absolute Hierarchy
The Borg depend on a vast number of Drones. Wikipedia depends on a vast number of volunteers. The Borg are guided by a Queen, Wikipedians are (mis)guided by their Administrators. The Queen can overrule any decision by the collective (assimilation of Voyager). The Administrators can eventually overrule any decision by the Editors.
Vandalism is the code for having an opinion that is different from their Admins.
3. Hive mind
Through a shared consciousness the Borg are capable of solving complex tasks incredibly efficient. However only the choice, deemed most appropriate by all Borg, will be implemented. Since the Borg collective is made from individuals to week to resist assimilation, those choices may not represent the most unique and sophisticated choices.
Wiki Editors have a hive mind, just as the Borg do. Wikipedians act in unison against individuals and pursue their dreams of Internet domination by collecting crap faster than anyone else collects. Wikipedians hate commercial interest. The Hive exists for the purpose of the Hive. Anything that remotely smells commercial must be removed. A small banner ad on a website will cause removal from the external links. Wikipedians either assimilate or dismiss the information on that website. Less credible, but advertising free, websites will be linked instead.
The Hive mind is susceptible to manipulation. Spreading an idea amongst the most influential drones or just the most drones will get that idea assimilated into the collective.
4. No Accountability
Since the Borg act as a collective, no single Borg is accountable for their actions. All Borg are victim to prior assimilation and are therefore not accountable for actions they perform under the collective. However, the entire collective consists of such individuals an obvious oxymoron. We cannot blame the Queen alone, as the collective continues to exist even after Mrs. Voyager killed the Queen. The collective even continued to assimilate.
Editors, Administrators and the Wiki Foundation each do not consider themselves accountable for content published on Wikipedia. While editors and Administrator hide behind a cloak of anonymity, just as Borg drones do, the Foundation hides itself behind disclaimers and waivers.
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/brandth01212006
5. Ejection
If a Drone is damaged beyond repair, it will be ejected from the collective. Its electrical-mechanical parts are harvested and re-distributed among the collective for further use. Drones who become self aware and who develop individual thoughts are considered to be damaged beyond repair and are subject to immediate self destruction to protect the Hive mind from their infectious thoughts.
Editors who become self-aware and have opinions that differ from those of the hive mind of Wiki-Drones will also be ejected from the collective. In Wiki terms this is called banning, but basically means punishment through ejection. By now Editors have lost the capability to think for themselves and will try to get back in by registering under different user names. Administrators will quickly identify the thought of the one in the hum of the Hive and ban them again.
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_sanction_noticeboard
6. Amazing capability of self repair
When a Borg Cube is damaged, the Borg focus all their forces on repair. With an unbelievable speed the Borg are able to recover and to resume their previous course of action.
When Wikipedia is damaged by a dose of reality, Wikipedians also force a lot of attention to resuming the old course. New revisions show up within minutes erasing any trace of real throught, bringing the article back to a mindless collection of boring factoids. Wikipedia articles are as exciting to read as Telephone books, because a personal touch is missing.
7. Adaptation
The collective gives the Borg the capability to adapt to changing threads. The vast computing power of the collective mind makes it easy to adapt to changing phaser frequencies even battle tactics, rendering once successful maneuvers useless.
You can observe the same with Wikipedia. Once it observed a thread, Wikipedia will quickly eliminate it and then start monitoring it (via user watch lists and administrator tools). Wikipedia exploits will become useless quickly once discovered.
8. Owning the Universe
Through their assimilation, the Borg collective grows. Like a virus inhabiting a body, the collective may spread until they consume everything.
Wikipedia spreads throughout the internet in the same way, hogging Search Engine results stealing visitors from the same sites Wiki stole its content. As if things would not be bad enough already, Wikipedia even ranks number one for many stub pages (stubs are pages that have no content on them).
Source:
http://www.wolf-howl.com/google/google-loves-wikipedi/
9. Misinformation
The Borg are not giving out any Information, Wikipedia gives out the wrong information.
Citing official Wikipedia’s spokeswomen: “there is no guarantee an article is 100 percent correct”.
Since everyone can edit any article at any given moment, there is a good chance, that the Wiki article you just opened is either being edited, in need of editing or has just received wrong and unverified information. An Encyclopedia is a trusted source of knowledge. Wikipedia is not an Encyclopedia but rather a collection of text blocks put together by people whose motives cannot be verified.
Source:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/01/26/wiki
10.They love battles
The Borg continue to attack and send wave after wave of attack until they win their battles. With each wave, they learn their attackers tactics.
The Wikipedians also send revision after revision until they win and their opinion, however misguided it may be, prevails. If they cannot win an argument, they simply lock their articles to prevent “vandalism”.
11.Busy Wiki-Drones get rewarded
This is something even the Borg could learn from Wikipedia:
Drones on Wikipedia are encouraged to be busy. The more they work, the higher their status becomes. Wikipedia does not encourage or reward quality but quantity. The more edits a person makes, the more powerful he/she becomes.
Wikipedia is in a constant flux of editing and re-editing.
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This was a lot of fun to read. Thanks for writing and sharing it.
I speak on behalf of the collective when I say that most of us drones don’t view our hive so negatively. Wikipedia may be far from perfect, but it is our quest for perfection that matters.
Hello 2,
I think I have discovered the first signs of humor from the collective.
The quest for perfection is certainly what drives the Borg, but in their quest they lost what makes us human, since perfection is anything but human.
Thanks for the comment.