The question I'm talking about: Which of 法国, 法兰西, and 法兰斯 is the most common word for France?
In my opinion, simple which-is-used-more questions already have a perfect answer if the asker learn to use the right tool, namely Google Ngram Viewer. Unless the question explicitly asks for:
- frequency in oral communications (that Ngram will not show because it collects data from books), and there is evidence that it may differ significantly from that of written communications, or
- frequency in a particular geographic area (not supported by Ngram), or
- in a dialect, e.g. Cantonese or Min Nan (probably not supported by Ngram, or too little data to be useful), or
- if it's about usage in a particular sentence (which makes it a word-choice question)
it is unlikely we as answerers can provide a more accurate and objective answer than the tool, after all, Google scanned millions of books[1], more than any of us would ever read in a lifetime.
So it is my opinion that we should close this kind of questions as off-topic, and include Google Ngram Viewer in the list of recommended learning resources. What do you think?
Edit 1: clarified some aspects of the proposal, see edit history.