Using Ezine Articles?

Hi, this is just a quick question, and I'd love to hear what other people think:

Assuming you can actually find usable articles on Ezine, and you keep them at 20% of your total content, is there a downside to using them?

Also, is it better to spread this 20% out amongst the life of the site, or just slap them all up at once with the date stamp set so they appear behind my decent content?

There are descent articles in ezine and burying them won't do any good

I don't doubt there are decent articles in Ezine (posted one or two myself after all lol) but you do have to wade through alot of crap to find them, that was one of the jobs I'd set myself for today but I lost interest after the first 7 and came on here instead (If Ezine articles were less greedy and just made their pages readable rather than covering every available inch with adverts I'd find it alot more appealing).

I was planning to stick to one EZine article per 5 real articles, is this still considered safe practice or is the allowable duplicate content less than that now?

(Actually I've just realised... I'm probably far better off approaching the people who wrote the articles and offering to slap them on my site as guest articles instead That way they get a readable authors credit instead of the half inch Ezines so graciously allow amidst their hundreds of adverts )

you're asking if it's worth it to hide duplicate content on your site? really?

Not at all, can people seriously not read a paragraph anymore?

I'm asking whether its better to place the allowable 20% duplicate content at the start of a site, or spread out.

(Actually don't bother answering that, dread to think how you'd misinterpret the question lol)

Having actually put it in writing I'd imagine I'm better off contact the writer directly, I'd imagine their first draft is fairly different to whats on Ezines anyway

20% uniqueness isn't enough to pass off an article as the real thing if that's what you're asking.

The reading comprehension level on display here is a little bit distressing...