With Hurricane Irene approaching the East Coast of the U.S., I thought it may be useful to collect and repost some of my observations about the common Twitter troubles we've caused upon ourselves during the March events in Japan.

• By using crisis keywords & especially hash tags without any information of practical use, we're drowning information of practical use in search. We can express dismay or empathy and share photos of the destruction later on.
• Native retweets greatly reduce search noise; when we instead copy and paste something, just to add "Wow", "Uh oh", "Jesus", it's not helping people who are are sifting through the noise to find useful information.
• If we're compelled to say just anything about the crisis, but we feel it may be stupid & has been told; let's trust that feeling.
• If we write tweets as sentences in a story, people will share & misunderstand them one at a time. Make sure each of your tweets is clear even when it's outside of your stream.
• As our speculations get spread, they become actions; if we were careless, into unintended actions with bad results.
• "It's good" / "it's bad" / "it's very bad" is nothing & everything; useful information is specific about the facts & their meaning.
• Proper advice can be contrary to generic rules of thumb; good intentions don't directly produce good outcomes. Make your proper research instead.
• Hoaxes sound official, look professional, get retweets & are sent by well-meaning friends; always check the source.

Apart from this, if you happen to be in the affected area, you have a higher priority list of things to do. Visit your city's web site and carefully read all details about getting prepared (water, food, medical supplies for at least 3 days, find in advance the locations of shelters nearby etc. etc.). If Twitter is one of the primary sources of information on your mobile device, find in advance trusted official sources to follow, which will keep you up to date (including the relevant accounts of your state and city).